


Space Trash

by Aperfecttimeforscreaming (GraveCounselor)



Series: Space Trash [1]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Blood and Gore, Complex Relationship, Drug Use, Enemies to Lovers, Fan Comics, Graphic Novel, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrations, Intended For Mature Audience, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rated For Violence, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26549671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraveCounselor/pseuds/Aperfecttimeforscreaming
Summary: After the events of the Florpus Zim is abducted off Earths surface to pay the price for his crimes, leaving Dib to deal with the truth of the cataclysm all on his own.13 years later, a sickly and disabled Zim returns to Earth to find Dib has moved in to his former base and claimed ownership over his former servants.Together they must confront the karmic hubris of their pasts and forage a way to survive in their harsh realities. Classic enemies to lovers with some less than savory violent and abusive elements thrown in, everyone in this timeline is horrible."You opened this can of worms, now lay in it"
Relationships: Dib & Zim (Invader Zim), Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Series: Space Trash [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930717
Comments: 23
Kudos: 174





	1. PROLOGUE (The Comic)

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to awkwardFawn here on A03 ( https://aporetic-elf.tumblr.com/) for assisting me in transferring my comic idea to graphic novel form! Who knew making a coloured and illustrated piece of literature on your own took so much fucking effort @_@
> 
> For Space Trash Updates and au related illustrations check me out on izspacetrash.tumblr.com
> 
> For a more streamlined read through of the prologue comic, here's a link to the first page:  
> https://izspacetrash.tumblr.com/post/617862664951136256/spacetrash-pg-1-first-youre-there-next?is_related_post=1#notes

~*Dream sequence time*~  



	2. The Nightmare Continues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An escape pod lands in in the front yard of the base providing Dib with three things; space ship parts, an alien specimen, and an existential crisis

At the very end of an unremarkable cul-de-sac with a one way exit is a remarkable house. Shorter than the townhouses that frame it, its mint green façade glows dimly across the overgrown blades of grass. Its lawn fixtures watch outward onto the road with red glowing eyes and an unblinking stare, all underlit by an undefined light source. The many flexible grey pipes snaking out of the houses sides latch onto the nearby buildings. As they drain the city of its power, the process gives off the subtlest of humms that can be heard from street level. On an average day, this is the only sound that can be heard from the mismatched technicolor blight of a home.  
Over thirteen years, wear and tear has caused tubes to rust and oxidize, paint to chip, roof shingles to fray. The lawn decorations are sun bleached and the scrimpy rectangular lawn is long and unkempt. Where the humm was once quiet, it is a loud and steady buzz. Everything more or less remains the same shape it was when Zim first entered Dibs life, and though the subterranean human rat doesn’t go topside more than once a week to gather supplies for living, he likes it that way.  
  
The early morning quiet is disrupted as progressively louder rumblings rattle the air and earth with their oppressive terraforming. A large deep pit of amber yellow jelly splits the yard of the weird home in two before consuming its center entirely, bathing the whole front of the home in a toxic choleric bile light.  
The door of this home opens, and Dib steps out. The top of his unfortunate hair sprig scrapes the door frame as he steps past it. The warm summer wind slides over his trenchcoat, and tickles the black hairs of his exposed scrawny legs. The yard stinks of city miasma, and the sterile yellow jelly of the pool fills his senses as he breathes deeply in the front yard. Dib sets his hands confidently upon his hips, and stares up into the dim lit smog streaked sky as the breeze ruffles his trenchcoat.  
  
“This is it.”  
He states, and like every time before that he’d said it, he feels it in the little hairs at the back of his neck. They stand at attention like ready soldiers. He steels himself.  
“I never thought it’d be so easy. All I had to do was patiently sit on my ass and wait for it come to me!”  
  
He grips his giant head, incredulous, grinning at nothing, speaking to the sentient AI of Zims base. The Computer, and to Gir.  
The absurdity of how easy it all is pulls ugly laughter from deep in Dibs lungs.  
Meanwhile, Gir sits by the large yellow pool and slaps its wiggly surface, giggling about how it jiggles.  
  
A voice of reason cut through Dibs mad gratifying laughter. The Home Computer interjected his detached witching hour howl to remind him of reality;  
“Now would be a good time to talk about how you plan on keeping the alien alive.”  
  
“What?” Dib turned back to look over his shoulder at the extended eyeball lens of the home computer, looking down at him from the ceiling.  
  
“The pod is going to open and whatever is inside it is going to drown. Most living things breathe vapor or liquid, not ballistic goo. You can’t possibly think it's not going to choke to death after sucking this shit into its breathing sacks.”  
Dib blinked slowly, blank eyed and numbed. His brain worked so hard that metaphorical smoke poured out his ears. He formulated, he started to formulate, he didn’t get a chance to enact any commands before the sky began shrieking with the sound of metal wreckage.  
  
A ball of fire, first a blip on the horizon and nothing more, built in size until it filled it with bright orange and white. A cylindrical tube with a bright fiery streak of ignited exhaust shooting out its back like a comet, its wings like a sparrows tail forking out of the vortian propulsion orb that drove it forwards, came hurtling from the void. Its cacophonous sound so total and high pitched that it was like a reverse screaming firework.  
After a quarter inhale, Dib turned back to Gir so hard his joints popped and shouted.  
“GET AWAY FROM THE POOL GIR!”  
  
There’s heat on Dibs forehead as he is blinded by the flame engulfed wreckage. He flinches and raises his arm to shield himself from the flash bang of goo and light and sound. Displaced jell explodes out over the yard. Dib is distantly aware of Gir screaming and running past him when he feels the metal demon baby push past his leg into the safety of the base.  
Down and down and down the ship flies, the sound stops, and all that’s left in front of Dib is a steaming pool of half melted yellow jelly.  
Dib flinches with his teeth grit, discouraged. All good things are too good to be true.  
“Oh. Wow. I don’t think ANY biological creature could have survived THAT kind of atmosphere entry. Do a quick scan of the pool, we’ll see if I can at least get some parts out of this disaster.”  
  
“Scanning for life forms.”  
The hollow Computer answers.  
  
Dib walks towards the pool with no urgency, his expression weighed by the depression he feels in gaining nothing. Again, he is without any atonement for his skills and efforts. As the computer scans the gelatin pool, the lighting shifts from yellow to pink and back again. Dib leans over the edge to survey the damage, and look at the black chunk of space trash trapped deep down inside of it like an unloaded bullet. Dib thinks of every other failed attempt to capture something alive to prove the existence of what he knows to be real. His expression is flat and emotionless as he reflects deeply on failed attempts to hype up his discoveries. His reputation is one of a man misleading his audience. Dib Membrane is a man with the drive to expose the truth, cursed to fall flat on his face instead of providing solid evidence. His reputation precedes him so thickly that he scrambles for allies to his cause. The bottom of the barrel has been scraped open till there is no bottom. The boy who cried alien thinks of how he has created a broken cylinder that holds nothing at all. He has no one who trusts him, no one to believe in him. Without Zims old things, he is nothing at all. He may as well be dead.  
  
“Dib.”  
  
Dib jumps when the computer calls his name. He snaps with unrighteous and brooding anger back at them.  
“ **_What_ ** ??!”  
  
“It’s still alive.”  
  


He hardly even hears the next sentences that leave the Home Computers speaker. His soul is so thoroughly rattled by the hope of the statement. His mouth gapes, his hands are removed from the pockets of his coat and shaking as he paces the pool edge, like a pissed off cat at a window looking out at a cheeky bird.  
  
“The life signs are faint. Whatever it is, it’s in bad shape, but potentially we could pull it out, dry it off, try and pull it apart in the lab for organs and stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s Irken but I’m not getting an identity ping off the PAK.”  
  
“IRKEN??”  
Dib spits out the title like someone shit on his tongue. He may as well be foaming at the mouth for the outright mania that bleeds out of his wide exhausted eyes. He’s not thinking anymore. Dibs gangling arms flounder ferociously to pull free of his swishy black jacket, because down deep in the yellow he can see a grey-green shape swimming up from 40 ft down. The irken is kicking with all its tiny might fighting for its life to surface and breathe. It doesn’t occur to Dib that he might drown in the half liquid slime, and it doesn’t matter. He would happily die for this once in a lifetime opportunity.  
  
The Computer tries to warn him that the fluid is more of a gel and will be incredibly hard to swim through, but the inconsolable man nosedives right in with no hesitation. He’s not sure what he expected on breaking the steaming surface. The gel is hot enough that it physically hurts to swim through, stinging like too hot coffee against his exposed skin. Diving in is like swimming through pudding, and Dib can’t see, he can’t open his eyes or he would risk exposing them to the singeing, scalding, semisolid ick. All he can do is swim and hold his breath and pray to god that somewhere 20 ft down, the drowning alien is going to meet him halfway and not pass him completely, dooming them both in the process.

  
He swims, he kicks, and he struggles, and his lungs burn, and the deeper he gets the hotter it feels, but he just keeps kicking onwards into what will surely be oblivion. If he dies here, he’s fine. He’s ok with that. It was for a worthy cause. He’s fine. It hurts, and he doesn’t need to keep living if he can’t get this one final push towards his vindication done right, because-  
Something slides past his hand. A hand touches his, small and clawed and cutting, it slices his skin, it clings to his arm. The tiny thing grabs onto his fleshy human body and tries to climb him, and Dib thinks he feels a tumbling wall of bubbles slowly pulling up past his face as the unknown creature exhales, stupidly.  
Dib snatches and presses its body to his chest. He holds it tightly to his body with one arm and lets it cling to him as it breathes in slime, getting weaker by the second, losing its will to kick and claw and resist his help. Dib doesn’t know how deep he’s swam, he can’t open his eyes to see. He can’t help it, before he reaches the surface he releases the air in his lungs. The bony frail-feeling creacher in his arms is still, but Dib is healthy and he’s never felt SO FUCKING CLOSE to victory.  
  
His hand breaks air, steaming and red, raw by the pools heat, and is followed seconds later by his gasping beat red face. He practically throws the precious bundle of shipwrecked alien over the edge of the pool before flopping over the side himself, gasping frantically for the air his worn out body so desperately needs.  
But he can’t hear the creature doing the same.  
  
When Dib looks up from where he lay, bent up on his elbows, he sees nothing but a still bundle covered in blue fabric, the lights of its PAK dim if not entirely shut off. The small, vaguely familiar irken is unmoving, unbreathing. Dib grits his teeth in frustration and grabs the thing by its tiny egg-like life support system to drag it back towards himself.  
“Oh no, no nooo no-, you’re not getting away from me, THAT easily!”  
He seethes, panting through his teeth as he turns the barely living corpse of an Irken over onto its back.  
  
Had Dib recognized the weight of who he held under him, maybe he would not have been so quick to call his limited CPR experience to the forefront of his mind.  
  
Dib had obsessively often thought of what it would be like to touch an Irkens lips to his own. In less dire circumstances, maybe he would have thought to linger on their feeling, on the taste of them, or on the smell of Irken skin and breath so close to his human snout. Instead, his skin was numbed by the burns it had endured and he could taste nothing but the bitter slime. He could hear nothing but the blood rushing in his ears as he beat the Irkens bony tiny chest between his palms to force life back into its green corpse. Again and again he forced his air down into the aliens lungs, until finally, he heard coughing.  
  
The tone and pitch of the hacking breathless cough, raspy and distorted as it was, was such a stunning level of whiplash to him that Dib felt his soul astral project out of his trembling lanky body.  
“Zi-” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Dib held his hand over his trembling lips as he stared down at the hacking, rasping, bony thing. The wretched, bony, weak, changed thing. There was no way. No way it could be Zim, but the voice was unmistakable.  
“You’re dead. No…”  
He couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Everything he’s done for the past 7 years was done under the assumption that Zim was gone forever, that he would never be back. And yet, there he was, under his hands, ribs cracked from Dibs frantic exertion of force, internally bleeding and so grossly underfed that Dib could practically see his spine through his guts. Dib trembled like the earth overcome by tectonic force.  
“ No!!! You’re dead!!! You’re FUCKING KIDDING ME!! YOU’RE not him!”  
  
It didn’t matter what Dib screamed, the Irken did not respond, because he couldn’t. Because he had passed out from exhaustion and bodily trauma and laid there, limbs and body and antenna limp, like some kind of demented emaciated doll from hell created to torment _Dib specifically_ . This was not his childhood rival. He wasn’t even DRESSED like an invader! Some kind of dusky blue skin tight vortian body suit covered up his vulnerable sickly body. The boots of the outfit had likely been kicked off in the slime to help the small green thing propel itself skywards.  
In the midst of Dib breaking down into a full on panic attack, the computer cleared its voice to interrupt him.  
“Heeeey. I know you’re having a moment, and that’s cool, but if you want to keep him alive you’re going to have to get him into a regeneration cell as soon as possible. You’re right, he shouldn’t be alive. If you really want him to die we could just leave him out here for a while and let nature take its course.”  
  
“FUCK NO.”  
Dib scrambled to snatch his jacket off the ground. He rolled the passed out Probably Somehow Zim onto it and roughly wrapped his Maybe Ex-Nemesis in the thick black leather to keep the Irken from waking up and attacking him.

Assuming the Irken was Zim, and not some wayward unnamed social reject, the state he was in was unrecognizably bad. As he positioned the aliens limbs to fit inside of the bundled fabric, he couldn’t help but think about how unreasonably small and brittle they felt, and how the skinny tiny hands were like clawed digits at the end of frangible willow branches. It made Dib physically nauseous to think that he had put so much of his life into battling and obsessing over such a pitious and dismally small, lime green roach. 

Why hadn’t he taken his fight against Zim seriously when he was younger? He had truly wasted a miserably long amount of time on the endeavor of stalking his estranged rival. 

Dib worked automatically and thoughtlessly to try and save the life of his shipwrecked anathema.  
  
  
The humans hand was bleeding out onto the coat as he wobbled to stand, and it stung as he clutched the bundle tightly to his chest. He slammed the front door behind himself with his foot, and his wound dripped red onto the floor tiles in large splattering droplets.  
“Computer! Close up that hole in the yard, drain the pool, move the ship down to the fabrication bay-”  
  
“You want me to warm up the elevator platform too?”  
  
Dib stepped onto the circular elevation pad, his face dead serious as he glared up into the everwatching bundle of wires in the ceiling.  
“Don’t make me dismantle you, smart ass. Just take me to the medicine chamber.”  
  
“YOU’RE LEAKING!!”  
Gir shouted as he ran out from behind the couch where he’d been hiding.  
  
“Huh?” Dib looked at his wound. Gir clung to his leg affectionately as Dib looked at the shallow gash on his palm in the fluorescent light of the descending platform.  
“Fuck. Fuck, when did that happen?”  
  
“You got it in the gel pool. Of course you didn’t notice. You’re in shock.” The computer offered, helpfully.  
  
“YOU GOT A BABY IN THERE?”  
Gir offered, less helpfully, as he tugged on the draping tail of Dibs jacket to try and get a good look at whatever it was Dib was holding. The human frowned at Gir, then looked at the Irken who maybe was likely Zim, and his frown turned terminally downwards.  
  
“No, Gir, I’m pretty sure it’s just a monster.”  
  
“Awwhhhhh, BUT ITS SO LITTLE!!”  
Gir was insistent on seeing, and kept pulling on the coat. Dib, who knew better than to ignore Girs insatiable curiosity, could not do much more than stand there gawking at the unconscious Irken, and trying not to let his frantic heartbeat get the better of him. Even that much was a lot to handle. His gut coiled in tense and nauseating knots, his mind swirling with theories of what possibly could have transpired to put Zim back on earth. Dib focused on his breathing instead of speaking, and eyed the lens of the House Computer to gesture for the Base to explain the issue.  
  
And so it did;  
“Ugggh. Yeah, GIR, it’s not like a bigfoot or a nessie or something large and impressive. It’s more like a fucked up frog.”  
  
“A FROG!!!”  
Gir gasped and hopped around like a frog in celebration.  
“You got one!! YOOOUU got ONE!! YOU GOOOOT OOOONE!!”

Gir of course, referred to how Dib had been trying to actually capture something and take it to the lab without some terrible luck to cause his plans to blow up in his face, for fucking years. And through his panic, Dibs success had flown right over his head.  
  
It began to dawn on him as the elevator platform slid to a halt. The magenta metal doors whooshed open and Dib stepped out. Gir zipped past him to run around, screaming in jubilation.  
“DIBZ GOOOT ONE!!”  
  
Dib looked around the cold dark medical bay and reflected on how rarely he had to go into it. At one point he’d fantasized a grandiose setup; A collection of dead and alive alien specimens lining the walls like pinned butterflies in a glass case. Soon after getting The Base back in working order, he had realized just how difficult building a collection of that scope would be.  
  
Cryptids by nature of being what they are, are difficult to capture. Aliens are particularly difficult to lure into a trap.  
Zims base was well equipped for constructing machines and spying on the technology of other cultures, its defenses were arguably sturdy. It was a great place for lab work and an even better space for catering to his every physical whim. But it was not built to help Dib bring down the rare transient spaceships curious enough to swing by earth and spectate his silly little Type I Civilization in decline. Signs of Irken interference and infrastructure tended to steer most ships in the opposite direction, so Dib had a better chance of catching them without the help of The Base’s tools. And that chance in itself was very slim, because earth is located in the middle of nowhere.  
  
All these factoids only made the slumbering bundle of green skin and bones in the crook of his arm that much more uncanny to look at. If this was Zim, this was a creature so vastly different from the one that had stubbornly lived on in the back of his mind for far too long. Zim was supposed to be indestructible. He was supposed to be deceitfully strong, endlessly energetic, irritating and grating on his nerves. When Dib watched the limp jacket wrapped body in his arms wheeze and rattle, what he felt was a kind of sickening tension. Was it worry? Was it pity?  
It couldn’t be Zim. He would _never_ pity Zim.  
  
As he looked down to his red and bloodied palm, a smile slipped slowly across his face. He had an alien, and that much was certain. That was something to celebrate. He even had kind of a cool war wound from catching it.  
“I. I got one….”  
The Irken either was Zim, or wasn’t Zim, and Dibs stunned mind couldn't be bothered to make a distinction in that moment. Gir was right.  
“YEAH!! I DID, DIDN’T I??? I GOT ONE!”  
  
“Youuuuu diiiiid!!”  
Gir skidded to a stop in front of Dib and grabbed him by the leg.  
“I always knew you could do it Dibbeyy! We gonna pin that frog and cut it oopeeennnnn~”  
  
The computer sighed loudly and subtly turned the brightness higher on the wall light beneath the healing pods.  
“Great work everyone. Let’s reflect on this half baked victory while the Irken dies in Dibs arms.”  
  
Dib frowned up at the ceiling, offended and grumpy, before he hobbled over to the nearest beaker, Gir still clinging onto his leg.  
“SHEESH! OKAY! I get it, this is urgent, this is time sensitive,”  
  
“Yeah, hurry your ass up. You can have as many mental breakdowns as you want after this. I promise, I won’t even interfere.”  
  
Dib turned his attention to the fluorescent pink screen of the irken control panel. His fingers smeared the touch surface with human red as he punched in the commands for the tube to drain and open, so he could set the irken inside.  
“I’ll have to get the suit off of it so I can properly assess the subject.”  
  
“You do not need to do that, my scans will ignore the clothing-”  
  
“AHBUHPBUP! This is about _MY_ studies, not yours.”  
Dib snapped back, no ulterior motives at all. The alien would survive long enough for him to get a good look at it.  
  
Dib would lean down a little bit and pat the top of Girs hollow empty head.  
“Good work today little buddy. Why don’t you go make us a victory snack? I’ll meet you in the kitchen when I’m done here.”  
  
Gir, just fucking thrilled at the praise and the opportunity to make food, beamed back at Dib and unlatched from Dibs leg to roll across the floor with a “YAAAYYYY!! OKAY!!”  
And off he would go, rapidly crawling through a ventilation duct, clacking and clanging as he clambered like a freak kid in a playplace made of plastic tubes.  
“IMA DO PEANUTBUTTER PICKLE SAMWITCHES!”  
Girs announcement echoed throughout the ducts in the lab like the voice of a child opera house ghost.  
  
Dib waited til Gir was gone before unwrapping the alien from his coat and setting the sick organism down inside the tube. The creature shivered like it was cold, its skin a burned almost rosy green tone, similar to Dibs own heat scalded skin. Still, it did not move.  
  
Dib gripped the zipper at the neck of the suit and dragged it down the front of the unconscious body to reveal all of the Irkens naked form. It peeled off of him, no part of it smelling great as Dib took notice of the layer of dead skin left inside of it. He’d grimace and drop the rank space suit aside to look at properly later. He’d pull the suit arms free of the aliens arms, then it’s legs free of the suits legs, and reveal what was barely a wisp of a living thing.  
  
“Computer; record initial findings. Subject is roughly under 4 ft tall standing, green skin tinted pink with some kind of blister reaction to extreme heat. Body is what I would describe as pear-ish shaped, or an A frame, with talons on the ends of each three digit appendage. Feet are raptor like, in the bird sense of the word raptor. ”  
Dib touched over one of the forearms, avoiding inspection of anything below the pelvis for reasons he felt were obvious and distracting.  
  


“Skin is velvety to the touch, almost rough, like short crushed velvet? Antennae are limp. Unsure if this reaction is purely related to unconsciousness, or if it’s also some kind of emotional indicator. Refer to previous notes on Irken behavior.”  
Dibs hands brushed up the twiggy arms til they reached the chest. He was careful not to push here, only gently stroking his fingers over the shape of the shallow rising and falling chest.  
“Chest area is bruised from resuscitation efforts. Bone structure is clearly visible through skin, with purple… pinkish?, bruising. Will update specimen log on healing progress and regeneration speed. I expect a fast recovery.”  
  


Dib licked his lips because they were dry, and brushed his thumb over where he might have expected human areola. Then he’d squint, as he noticed a thinner patch of what almost seemed to be fur in the center of Zims chest between the breast plates. He felt it over with his fingers and combed gently as he recorded:  
“No nipples, as expected. But there’s some kind of tuft? Like, a rabbit? Or, really soft chest hair.”  
Dib was wide eyed with fascination over his live captured subject, but could not shake the fear in the back of his mind. What if it really was Zim? Worse than that was the thought that made his palms tremor and his throat dry and tight. What if it wasn’t?   
  
  
“You’ve got about five minutes before he goes over the precipice into critical condition. Could you maybe quit talking to yourself and close the tube?”  
  
“Stop rushing me I KNOW that already!”  
Dib stood back up and brushed his hands off on the legs of his boxers, as if wiping Irken germs off of them. Dib would hiss as he was again reminded of his cut hand, this time with the soundness of mind to actually address the problem.  
“Uchg. Shut off the recording.”  
Dib frowned at his stinging wound and turned his attention back to the blood streaked fuchsia controls. With a quick trio of beeps, Dib closed up the tube and watched as the pink semi-solid fluid filled the bottom of the container. PAK cables and life support tubes dropped down to connect to the Irkens cyborg brain and inject him with the drugs and nutrients needed to stay alive.  
  
Dib watched on, hands folded behind his back and held tightly to keep them still. Acting like his stomach wasn’t in his throat was the only way he could retain the level head he’d regained. It didn’t matter who the irken was, he told himself, either way it was going to be at his disposal.  
“Scan its memory data bank. I want to know who this thing is, and where it came from.”  
  
“Oh. Owwwwhhhhggg, owwwwww,”  
The House computer groaned, like they were dealing with one of the worst migraines in the world.  
  
“What? What is it now??”  
  
“It’s just. Fuck that’s a lot of errors. I was pretty sure that it was Zim when I scanned its Bio signal, but now it’s obvious. There's no pulling a coherent story from that incomprehensible mess. Not unless you want to attempt replacing my brain without the right tools to do so.”  
  
Dib kissed his teeth bitterly and crossed his arms in front of himself, uncomfortable as the computer went on. He watched the decimated irken rise up to about eye level inside of the gel, and stared down the sleeping body with a pernicious squinting gaze.  
  
“He’s worse than he was when he last asked me to look into his PAK. It’s amazing most of the basic functions are still working.”  
  
“ ‘Most’? Put your diagnostics up, I want to see this in real time.”  
Dib bit his lip. He paced the floor in front of the tube. He could not shake off the gut twisting unease. Somehow, knowing the Irken was Zim did not help him feel any better.  
  
  
“Now displaying diagnostics.”  
  
Dib leaned closer to the flat screen beside Zims tube. His eyes widened as he looked down the list of red error messages, watching as the information scrolled with marked invested interest.  
“He’s declawed.”  
  
“I guess you could call it that, yeah.”  
  
“Well what else would you call it if someone took away all your weapons and defenses, and left you with your basic survival functions? Somebody didn’t want Zim capable of opposing them. And this-- what’s all this memory error information about? A decade worth of corrupted memory data?”  
  
“Yeah, a Tenyear. It’s kind of a big deal.”  
  
Dib stroked his chin. He hummed and gestured for the computer to place a chair behind him for him to sit on. Seconds later the floor behind him opened and a tall backed chair floated up from the blackness, Dib plopped down. Half a second after that, a saucer shaped floating table lifted up out of a smaller hole, on top of it was a rectangular tray of first aid supplies.  
  
“Great, as if he wasn’t irritating enough when I knew him before, now he’s got alzheimers.”  
Dib sighed and popped open the lid. First taking the bottle of disinfectant, he poured it out over the open cut with a hiss. Alcohol and blood dripped out onto the cool floor and Dib patted the area dry with a patch of cotton gauze before wrapping his wound shut.  
  


“Actually, what I’m seeing from the data is something closer to stress damage, like a human might get. You could call it Irken PTSD, or trauma related psychosis.”The Base corrected.  
  
Dib laughed, quick and bitter and loud, his mouth twisted in a snarl.  
“Oh **_HE’S_ ** GOT DAMAGE, _DOES HE_ ? From all his years being treated like a fucking pariah? That’s rich.”  
Dib tested out his hand, the tingling shooting pain of gripping and releasing was something too tempting of a distraction to ignore.  
“Zim doesn’t even _know_ what trauma is. Not yet. I’ll show him brain damage, that megalomaniacal little gnat.”  
  
The computer sighed. It displayed a scan of Zims sleeping organic brain next to the scrolling list of hardware and software issues.  
“All due respect, my good Sir Dude, look at him. I know you’re determined to do what you’re going to do, and you kind of own me and Gir by right of conquest, but I’m asking for a little compassion on my Ex. Masters behalf. I genuinely have never seen him this bad. It’s a miracle he’s still breathing, Dib.”  
  
Dib grunted, waved his hand in general disagreement, and rested his chin on his folded unharmed hand as he leaned over the counter.

“No, the real miracle here is that he had the audacity to return to earth. He doesn’t even have a reason to be here anymore. He knows his mission was a lie, Red and Purple are dead-- and besides, half the fucking universe thinks he’s on par with a saint. This is the last place he should have run to.”  
  
Dib leaned back again, he spoke with his hands as his face crinkled with ire.  
“This is his own damn fault. The moment his body is healthy enough to yield accurate experimentation results, I am going to do such UNSPEAKABLY horrible things to him that aliens won’t even think about LOOKING at earth for another millennia. And since it’s Zim, no one will care. Getting cross-sectioned into microscopically thin layers might just be the only useful thing he’s done in his entire life. Really, what I’m saying is, I’m doing everyone a favor.”  
  
The computer grunted in wordless disagreement before answering Dib.  
“Why don’t you wait til he wakes up, and talk to him before you start plotting how to mess him up worse? Stop projecting your hate so hard. It’s been 13 years. You only know what you know about him because you stalked him through tabloids. That’s like saying you hate a celebrity based on TMZ articles.”  
  
“YEAH! OK BUT IT’S NOTHING LIKE THAT!!”  
Dib burst out, throwing his folded arms up in the air.  
“I KNOW Zim. I knew him before all that, I know what he’s like. I know that all he really wants is to destroy everyone around him just to raise himself up! He never even respected you when you were his computer! Why do you care what I do with him?”  
  
Dib sat quietly and alone in the Med Bay as the Computer mulled over why exactly they might still feel some shred of loyalty to the unpleasant micro tyrant. For a moment there was nothing but the sound of mechanical components buzzing at a low decibel in the wall, and the last of the fluid filling up the inside of the beaker.  
  


Ever since Zim had disappeared, the hollow shell of his absence had felt like an infected wound on Dibs life, festering and oozing and slowly rotting his future from the inside out. It was true that moving on would have been healthier for him. It was true that he had made an attempt to let the leviathan of his youthful conquest rest, but everything mundane had paled in comparison to the life he’d had chasing Zim. He’d never been able to let go of his desire to ascend beyond earth and it’s petty squabbles.  
On the night of his arrest, Zim had left Dib miserable and alone, and he’d taken Dibs best shot at freedom and vindication along with him into the nigh-untouchable void.  
As the computer answered, Dib stared into the glass beaker at Zim, half wishing the Ex-Invader would wake up and give him another reason to hate him.  
  
“I just **do** .”  
They offered, finally, much to Dibs discontentment.  
The home computer continued to implore Dib for any kind of empathy.  
“And you’re ignoring all the evidence that Zim is more than just the blind drive to gain a glorious title for himself. I mean he was glory-seeking back then, and yeah he did try to destroy earth, and yes he messed with your head and lots of others, and he’s probably still selfish- but come on. You’ve seen the diary entries of when he was starting to come out of his delusions. And when he left, he was probably stripped of them entirely. For all you know, Zim could be an entirely different Irken now.”  
  
Dibs lip curled and his nose crinkled. He said nothing further about the topic at hand- Zim being an irredeemable monster Vs the victim of some unfortunate circumstance. He looked away from the screen and the tube, got up from his chair, and gathered up the slimy bloody bundle of coat he’d left on the table.  
“ FINE. I’ll leave him alone til you think he’s in stable condition. And I _GUESS_ I’ll talk to him before giving an official diagnosis of what I want to do with him. But this doesn’t change the plan.”  
Dib turned his back on the commiserable Irken in his floating hospital tank and stomped purposefully back towards the elevator.  
  
“Thank you Master. You probably need to get back to sleep anyways. Humans need 8 hours of sleep every day, and you’ve gotten 4 hours over the course of 48 hours.”  
  
Dib laughed the base off as he entered the doorway.  
“SLEEP? You think I’m going to be able to _SLEEP_ after all this? Fat fucking chance.”  
  
The elevator door slid shut and all the lights in the lab turned off save for those that illuminated Zims single solitary tube. His thin shape casting the slimmest long shadow across the floor. Nothing but the constant internal humming of the base and the soft sound of filtrating medicinal gel passed his antennae, and for the first time in a long time, the unconscious Zim felt soothed and relaxed.  
He had finally made it home.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to awkwardFawn here on A03 ( https://aporetic-elf.tumblr.com/) for assisting me in transferring my comic idea to graphic novel form! Who knew making a coloured and illustrated piece of literature on your own took so much fucking effort @_@
> 
> ALSO shout out to https://eligos-art.tumblr.com/ for help with the glow effects on this chapters illustrations! You really brought them to life :) 
> 
> For Space Trash Updates and au related illustrations check me out on izspacetrash.tumblr.com
> 
> For a more streamlined read through of the prologue comic, here's a link to the first page:  
> https://izspacetrash.tumblr.com/post/617862664951136256/spacetrash-pg-1-first-youre-there-next?is_related_post=1#notes


	3. Intruder Dib

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After defusing a tense visit from the secret police, Dib heads back down to the Med Bay to speak to Zim for the first time in 13 years.

When Dib returned to the floor level of the base, it was with a tense stomach and a busy mind. He could not refuse Girs insistence on getting a peanut butter and pickle finger sandwich, which was nicely cut like a regular finger sandwich but full of very bad ingredients.  
With Zim contained and the remains of the crashed ship safely below ground, Dibs spike of anxious emotions began to die down. In the wake of the commotion he was a tired shell of a man. He’d fall back onto the couch like a boneless weighted doll and chew the sandwich in his cheek like a cow grinding up its cud. He let his gaze fixate on a pixel point of the TV screen.  
He hears Gir’s hollow metal feet clacking on the worn linoleum floor, and addresses him without turning his way, eyes fixated on the television screen hollowly.  
“Gir, can you grab me the bat by the door, buddy?”  
  
“OKAY!!!”  
The tiny metal feet clack quickly across the floor, towards the door and back to Dib, who is not paying attention.  
“ _YOU MEAN THIIIIS BAT??_ ”  
Gir asks, moments before the disastrous collision of the odd purple steel weapon against both of Dibs shins.  
  
The human jerks forwards, food flies out of his mouth as he cries out in pain, his whole sunburned body lurches forward as he gags loudly, and nearly chokes on a chunk of partially chewed pickle. Gir hops onto the couch beside Dib as if he’s done nothing wrong at all, and changes the channel to watch one of his technicolour animated TV shows.  
  
Once he dislodges the pickled vegetable chunk from his windpipe, Dib sucks in air angrily through his teeth and turns to Gir beside him.  
“Would it kill you to do things nicely for ONCE?”  
  
Gir, indifferent to his master's pain, replies;  
“Maybe!”  
And sucks hard on the straw sticking out of his sippy cup.  
  
Dib sighs with his brow pinched in exasperation and picks up the weapon now laying at his feet.  
As he takes it in his hands and looks it over, he marvels at the genius of his own craftsmanship. Like many things that Dib has built for himself, the bat is inspired by the Irken Invader technology found in Zims lair. On the surface the bat is nothing more than it appears, a red-purple aluminum baseball accessory with cool geometric shapes etched into the barrel and end cap. It barely passes as normal. But with a twist of the handle, those geometric shapes unfold and the bat opens up into a kind of plasma shotgun. By flicking a button on the knob, the whole thing compacts to a cylinder a little bigger than the size of a pen, and is far easier to sneak into the kind of places where it’d be suspicious to hide an entire bat inside his trenchcoat.  
  
The bat is one of the first projects that Dib took on after Zims disappearance. He’d taken it with him through Jr. High, and High School and all the way to university, before finding himself back where it had all begun. He’d never used the gun inside it on another person, even though the temptation to do so had been strong at times. It was a personal victory of his that he’d never reached that point. Dib Membrane wasn’t a killer. It was a tool of and for self defense, and it was exactly what he felt like he needed when he thought about how the neighbors were going to react to a spaceship crash landing in his front yard.  
  


Dib can relax a little more with his weapon in hand, and chooses to take up his half of the couch by curling up against the arm rest. He does it just because laying down feels good, it’s not because his worn out sleep deprived body needs rest and he can’t help it, no. He’s going to rest his eyes for 5 minutes tops and then get right back to being on guard for pesky neighbors peeking in on him.  
He doesn’t think he’s going to get any sleep, but his eyelids are so heavy and he’s so stressed out and his scrawny scalded body has lost blood. Before Dib can even realize what’s happening or warn Gir not to let him fall asleep, he’s laying down on the couch wrapped around the purple metal bat as if it were a treasured stuffed animal, snoring and drooling and dreamlessly unconscious. 

  
Hours later Dibs rejuvenation cycle is disrupted by a loud knock at the door. Sunlight streams in through the cracks in the thick dingy curtains, and Dib squints up at the ceiling as he lays on his back. The TV in front of him is still running, and he hears the rerun of one of the recent public service advertisements.

On the screen is an innocent fair haired child skipping and frolicking through a residential street. From the shadows of the nearest alleyway a voice calls her attention, and as she comes over, it asks her if she’s ever been mad at her teachers or her parents, if she feels like the people who control her deserve to die. 

The dark cloaked figure in a black bandanna asks her if she “wants to strike back at the system” in a very exaggerated evil voice, he asks if she “feels too safe, and wants to taste real freedom”. The cloaked figure steps forward and invites her into the alleyway with a beckoning dark hand with dirty poorly trimmed nails. Behind him in the alley, hundreds of glimmering red eyes appear out of nowhere.  
“C’mon, don’t be a sheep, you can rule your own life. You don’t need all the people who are looking out for you. You know better than them, right? Parents, Teachers, Grandparents, Firefighters, Doctors, Lawyers, Senators, The president; they’re all controlling you kid. Let’s destroy society, together.”  
  
Then suddenly, just as she fearfully reaches out to take the outstretched hand, a cop car pulls up. The camera pans in to a cop decked out in bullet proof riot gear with gleamingly white teeth and skin to match. Behind him glows a bright golden ray of light as he whips out an AK-47.  
“Stand back lil’ lady, I’ll send these pinko terrorists back to hell!”  
Then, without really waiting for her to stand out of the way, he opens fire on the alleyway. A large splash of red blood splatters across the screen and drips down to reveal the words  
_“The enemy is among us”_ and a polite announcer begins to describe how you can call government offices to alert them to radical communists without having to leave the safety of your own home!  
The commercial fades out with a picture of the cop and the little girl high fiving behind the text;  
“Let’s defend America, together!”

As the doorbell repeatedly rings, Dib groans and turns to face the bundle of wires in the ceiling. He angrily questions The House:  
“Oh, GOD. Why did you let me pass out?”  
  
“You never told me to keep you awake.”  
  
Dib sits up with a pissed off groan and presses the palms of his hands firmly into the hollows of his eyes. The world goes dark as he pushes colors into his eyelids with the force of his rubbing.  
Stupid, how could he have been so STUPID as to let himself fall asleep? Who knows how much he could have missed the neighbors doing? Had he even thought to ask the house to fix the lawn?  
As Dib internally grills himself for all the things he slept through doing, the knocking gets louder.  
He’s grateful he had the sense to at least throw on some black sweatpants before he returned to ground level.  
He takes the big metal bat warmed by his body heat from its place tucked against his shoulder, and he clicks the button on the knob to reduce it down to a manageable size. The pen sized weapon is slipped into his coat pocket for safekeeping, before he slides his hallmark garment on, one arm after the other.  
Dib thinks to himself that whoever is at the door probably isn’t the FBI, they won’t know that whatever crashed the night before was an alien escape pod, or that he’s got the aforementioned extraterrestrial life form captured alive inside his Irken lair basement. 

He’s smart, Dib thinks, he can more than likely outwit them. There's _nothing_ suspicious about him and the bright mint robot home he lives in, _nothing at all_ !  


After a deep grounding breath and double checking that he still has the collapsed steel bat inside his coat pocket, Dib gets up. He trudges forwards and straightens out the thin metal frames of his stupid nerdy eyewear as he walks to the front door. Normally he would be shoving Gir back to keep him from making a scene at the front of the house, and it strikes him as odd that his little minion isn’t there at his heel, but he can’t ignore the people at the door any longer.  
He can hear the frustrated voices outside already, one loud midwestern sounding man, and a quieter voice like a deep ringing bell. He’s certain he knows them from somewhere, but can’t quite place the memory in his groggy state of mind. Before he can scan his brain to know for sure, or eavesdrop long enough to pick up on the topic of their conversation, they announce themselves.  
“Neighborhood watch!! Open up! We know you’re in there, Mr. Human!”  
  
Dib clutches the hot, worry-worn shaft of the collapsed bat in his palm for reassurance as he goes to open the handle, blood cold in his veins. There’s no time to go looking for Gir to make sure he’s not ruining anything.  
The neighborhood watch? He expected this. He saw it coming. With nosy neighbors on all sides, and the Cacophony of disturbing explosive sounds that rattled the block the night before, there was no way that he was going to get by scott-free on this one.  
Dib takes in a sharp breath. His spine pops as he fixes his slouching posture and unlocks the door to open it.  
  


“Hello? Can I help you?”  
He offers his best, most genuine, least creepy smile, and being a great actor he even lets it reach his eyes. Dib means for this to look friendly and is not very aware of how overly enthusiastic and creepy he looks.  
  
On the other side of the door is a man much shorter than him, and a woman nearly a head taller. Dib rudely looks them up and down as the man begins to speak.  
“Hi there, I’m Mr. Kyle, and this is my associate Glenda the Punch. We’re here on behalf of some concerned American citizens living in your area. Could we have a minute of your time to talk to you about what happened between 3:30 and 3:40am today?”  
  
Kyle is genial, short, and portly, with his hair on his thumb-shaped head cut short, and thick hair on his forearms. He stands there with his hands innocently folded around a black plastic clip board, like his beefy fists couldn't break Dibs bones. Next to him, Glenda is a borderline scandanavian-looking woman, with her hair pulled back into a dark box braid. Her face is tense, still, and humorless. Her stance is wide. Her build is muscular and athletic, and she stands with her arms at her sides, looking down on him like a scornful soldier. And that’s not far from the truth.  
  


They both wear a dark navy blue neighborhood watch uniform, with the white bulletproof vest overtop the standard polo shirt and khaki pants.  
Dib thinks it looks like a vsco version of a California cop, meant to be less threatening and more approachable than a cop, despite being just as bad. It's like the uniform of an enforcement agent protagonist in a lighthearted 90s sitcom about a perfect loving Beverly Hills community. They’re meant to look defanged, but every single member of the neighborhood watch carries a loaded side piece, and Dib knows it.  
  
He feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and begins to sweat. He is well rested and that probably helps him look civilized and normal, more normal than his usual self. His skin is pinkish from the sunburn like wounds all over his body, but that’s probably not that weird given that it’s June. He could just say he’d been tanning! They’d buy that, right? He’s lied himself out of worse situations, and here today he will do it again.  
  
Dib forces a delighted chuckle and stands confidently in the doorway to his stolen home.  
“Oh, please, Zim is fine! All my friends call me Zim.”  
Despite having gone by the first name of his nemesis for years, being referred to as Zim always made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He suspected his bristling up had to do with that one time Zim’s PAK had attached itself to his chest, nearly killing both of them in the process. Dib almost felt the ghost of pain, the feeling being punctured through his sternum through the scars on his chest, but knew better than to focus on the emotional ache it or it’s implications in that moment.  
Dib easily ignored his shitty feelings and kept his attention on the high pressure situation.  
  
“Zim it is then.” The stout man offers Dib a smile back, but when Dib looks at Glenda her face doesn’t even twitch. She is unmoved, unfeeling and immune to Dibs niceties as her partner continues his line of questioning.  
“Alright Zim,” Mr. Kyle replies candidly, “What happened out here on your lawn at 3:30am? There seems to be an awful lot of grass missing.”  
  
He steps aside to illustrate what he means, and Dib is relieved to see that the ground where the giant glowing pit of jelly had been the night before was not still a pit.  
However, the unkempt wild growth of grasses that had once capeted the base’s front lawn was gone, and made the quick fix repair blatantly obvious. Instead of grass there was only bare ground and rocks, splotched with crusty patches of dried out slime, covering a large rectangular patch in the center of the yard.  
  
“Oh, yeah, that!”  
Dib starts with a smile plastered on his face. 

He scratches the back of his head sheepishly.  
In response Glenda tilts her neck in a way that makes the thick, tall bones crack.  
Dib resists gulping as a fear based reaction to her obvious intimidation tactic, and starts sweating instead.  
“Yeah. Well, I got sick of looking at what an overgrown disaster my lawn was, and decided maybe it was time to scrap it and start over again.”  
  
“Just in that specific square, Zim? Seems strange to me that you’d leave all those weeds rimming the outside. Did you leave them there for your dog?”  
  
  


They knew about Gir? Who had been mentioning Gir to them? Oh, fuck maybe he should have waited for Gir to join him? Was it suspicious not to have Gir? He kept his hands in his pockets and rubbed the collapsed bat with his thumb.   
“Well I didn't have a problem with all the weeds, you see. Just the ones in the middle.”  
Dib glanced at Glenda to gauge how the lie was going over, and it was damn near impossible to fully tell, because she wore the same aggressive unnerving expression at all times.  
“The ones on the outside are like a framing detail for what I’m going to put in the middle. My dog is, hah, he’s just a dog! He’s not gonna care if he’s got grass or dirt to piss on. He’ll adjust _just fine_ to whatever I end up doing.”  
  
“Oh, what are you going to put in the middle then, Zim?” Kyle leads, “We got a report that stated that there was some kind of a pool in the yard last night; one which you emerged out of?”  
  
Dib threw his head back in laughter and leaned on the doorframe.  
“That’s ridiculous. C’mon guys, do you see a pool there right now? How could I add a pool and get rid of it in under half an hour?”  
He’d look at both of them with a knowing look, as if to say _“Really? No way that’s true”_. 

He cupped beside his mouth with his hand to elevate the effect of his very loud whispering. “Your source has got to be taking the wrong medications, if you get what I mean.”  
  
“Hmn.“ Kyle jots something down on his clipboard. His eyebrows scrunch with thought.  
“That would be just a little bit _too_ peculiar to be true.”  
  
“Yeah, of course.”  
Dib glances briefly at Glenda, too scared to stare at her for too long. The way she just barely squints at him in irritation makes sweat drip down the back of his neck. He considers never looking at her again, but if he didn’t look, how would he know when to whip the bat out and defend himself?  
  
Kyle grinned back at him. He checks his clipboard and taps the pen against it.  
“Can you explain the noise? The bright lights?”

  
“Yeah of course. I pulled out some strip lights to illuminate the yard while I worked. The loud noise was just my whipper snipper and ground dreger getting rid of those pesky weeds.“  
  
“Oh, yes, I see. That makes sense to me now.”  
Kyle nodded, and just when Dib thought he was out of the clear, he’s caught off guard by the final question.  
“What about the satellite that fell out of orbit last night?”  
  
“I... beg your pardon?”  
Dib squints, doing his very best to look earnestly confused.  
“Satellite? Where did that land? I hope no one was hurt.”  
  
“No, no, Mr. Human no one was hurt, thankfully. But the really strange thing is, though we know the satellite landed somewhere in this cul de sac, we can’t find it anywhere.”  
  
Dib scratched his chin. 

“Huh, wow. That would have been really REALLY loud, right? I swear I would notice something like that. This house is so small and the walls are so thin, you know. I can hear the neighbors when they uhhh,”  
He cleared his throat with his fist in front of his mouth, and feigned awkwardness.  
“-make the beast with two backs. **If** you know what I’m saying.”  
Dib fake nudged Mr. Kyle with his elbow and winked, proceeding to make everyone involved in the conversation very uncomfortable.  
“It gets so loud I have to drown them out with the TV! You guys might want to talk to them about that, since you’re already in the area and all.“  
  
Glenda grimaced and glanced off away from the unpleasant conversation as Mr. Kyle kept talking.  
  
“Well I guess if you haven't seen it, there’s nothing left to bother you about.... “  
He scratched the stubble on his thick chin and let the moment linger, like some kind of condescending asshole. 

“ That is, everything except for the concerning state of your home. It’s a mess! You can’t say you haven't seen this coming.” Mr. Kyle giggled and looked back at Dibs lawn as he scratched his head. Glenda stared Dib down, unblinking, till he had to look away from her for fear of sudden internal combustion.  
  
Glenda only broke her leering gaze with Dib to reach for something at her side, and Dib flinched. He stiffened all over, his eyes big and wide as his heart beat in his ears. He thought she was going to shoot him at point blank for all the very illegal shit he’d been doing and the colour drained from his face.  
Everyone noticed. Glenda didn’t react, she merely pulled out a yellow book of tickets from her side pocket and quickly began to jot down a ticket.  
As Dib meekly faced off with Glenda, Mr. Kyle continued.  
“You somehow made it even uglier with your renovations. Mr. Human, and this lot has been in disrepair for a very long time. It’s devaluing the surrounding properties. I’m sure you understand why we have to saddle you with a ticket. Maybe next time you’ll find the energy to mow your lawn instead of ripping it up in a horribly loud way that disturbs the peace!” 

Glenda would pass Dib a yellow slip of paper with an astronomical fee upon it that caused his jaw to drop, and he thought that maybe getting shot in the chest would have been a better outcome.  
“FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS?!!? Just for not having a well manicured lawn!!?”  
His temper flared, til he noticed the way that Glenda snapped the book shut quickly. Dib finally began to crack, he couldn’t help the way his fist clenched the ticket, or the way he bared his teeth as he shouted.  
“WHY IS IT THIS MUCH?? THIS IS ABSURD!”  
  


“ Hey now, I’m just doing my job Mr. Human.Keep in mind, that fine is for the entire allotment of time your front lawn has been a problem for our community. We accept the eccentricity of your home,Zim, but we cannot condone untidiness. I'm sure you can understand.”  
  
Dib, shellshocked, stared at the list in question and shook his head in his bandaged hand. That was when Mr. Kyle noticed the bandaged limb.  
“Whoa, cut yourself pretty deep there?”  
He pointed.  
  
Dib looked up from his slip of paper at his wound and laughed quickly.  
“Oh that! Yeah, got that from working the lawn last night.”  
He grit his teeth, inhaled, and seethed. It was time to go.  
“Guess I’d, better get back to work on that! It was _lovely_ meeting you two. Happy to see you taking part in the beautification of our quaint little cul-de-sac.”  
  
“Happy to be here, Zim. We’ll try and check in from time to time, just to see how things are going with your home and the renovations. Remember! If we watch each others backs, we will be safer as a nation!“  
The man would hold his hand over his bullet proof vest over his heart patriotically, as his partner turned around, already done with the visit. She took one disgusted glance back at Dibs home as she left, looked it up and down and squinted in a suspicious way that made Dib feel decidedly unlike he’d done a good job.  
  
Dib would grin, smile, nod, and close the door as they left. The moment he was alone with The House, he would fly into a blind nervous rage. The paper was stuffed into his pocket and the living room table was flipped with an angered bellow. 

“WHHHYYY DIDN’T YOU FIX THE FUCKING GRASS??”  
  
“You think I’m the master of plant growth Dib? What, just because I’m alien AI trapped in house form, I can grass-bend? That shit is expensive. Here, let me fly off world and go get all the chemical compounds that are totally unobtainable here on earth, and I’ll concoct a magic potion that grows lawns.”  
  
Dib, screamed in frustration and kicked the couch.  
“I DON’T NEED THIS FROM YOU RIGHT NOW!! I’ve been trying to avoid those people like a fucking plague! For years now, we’ve managed to fly **_so far_ ** under the radar that they forgot how to deliver the mail here. So TELL ME, how it is, we fucked up this badly???“  
  
“Well Master Dib, we’ve never had a ship crash land in our front yard. So maybe sit down, calm yourself, and take some deep breaths. Then you can figure out where to go from here.”  
  
Dib paced the length of the room with his shoulders hunched, back and forth he went, refusing to take helpful advice from The Computer out of spite because of how pissed off he was. He ran his hands back through his hair in a shaky self soothing motion, and started to calm. When he had his head back in order, he’d start.  
“Ok, so they know that I was up to something unusual last night. But I’m not the only weirdo in this neighborhood, that's ok, that’s fine.”  
He took out and looked at the crumpled up fine in his pocket, and thought of how much easier things could have been if he’d just used the bat to kill them. No. No, not easy, it would have been messy. He’d shake his head.  
  
“Fifty Thousand USD. Can we pay this off?”  
  
“Yeah, easily. But paying it off in one lump sum might tip them off to this being more than a humble home. And that’s what you were going for, right?? This is a humble, one man home for a poor sick man?”  
  
Dib laid out the yellow fine slip on the kitchen table, and tapped his fingers on its surface.  
“Yeah here’s the thing, if you’re suggesting I go out there and get a job to pay it off- NOW OF ALL TIMES- it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to apply for any government disability money either. I’m going to have my hands full with my research. So I can’t be bothered attempting to be normal around other people, or sucking the long flaccid disease riddled cock of the states bureaucratic system, AND still be able to get Zim to give up the secrets of his PAK.”  
  
“Challenging dilemma. Should I just pay it off and come up with some kind of excuse that’ll be hard to argue against? Maybe money from a dead relative?”  
  
“Noooo, no that’s too easily traceable.”  
Dib hissed,  
“We need something like…. Won the lottery in a foreign country. Maybe, Canada. Or Sweden 2.”  
  
“Ah yeah, good ol’ Sweden 2. The advanced version of the first one. Totally better in every way, including lottery wins.”  
  
“Exactly, that’s perfect.”  
  
Dib shook out his coat to shrug off his anxious sweat and moved to the kitchen counter. While he was there he turned on the automatic coffee dispenser and set a thick Swamp Thing themed mug underneath the spout. As it gurgled and spat out the dark black liquid, he’d feel the slightest bit of ease come over him again. Then a realization hit him.  
“Hey, so where was Gir during all that? Usually he’s the first person to get to the door.”  
  
As Dib picked up and blew over the surface of his black coffee, he’d sigh.  
“Not that I’m complaining. That could have been a disaster if I’d had him come in and do his sub-par dog impression in front of Glenda The fucking Punch. What kind of an alias is that? The secret police aren’t even trying anymore.”  
Dib sipped his coffee as the computer replied and leaned back against the counter.  
  
“GIR’s been in the medical bay for maybe two hours now spending time with Zim. Seems like there’s lots they have to catch up on.”  
  
Dib exhaled the hot coffee he’d been slurping on. It all sprayed out from his lips and teeth as he broke out into a series of hacking labored breaths.  
“ZIM IS AWAKE, AND YOU DIDN’T WAKE ME UP TO TELL ME?”  
Dib growled and stomped his way the short distance over to the central elevator pad.  
  
“You both needed the rest. And you told me you wanted to talk to Zim when he was healthy enough to handle it. According to the data I’m getting off of him right now, he’s not ready to handle it.”  
  
“If he can talk to Gir, he can talk to me.”  
Dib insisted darkly as he wiped the black/brown drippage off his stubbled dripping chin with his forearm. His coffee mug was brandished like a weapon as he loudly slurped again.  
  
What was he going to say to Zim to reintroduce himself? Would the Ex Invader even recognize him? It’d be just like Zim to totally forget about him, to have cleared out his brain of all Dib based thoughts to make room for what he’d been doing up in space. Dib figured what with all the new people he’d met and the new experiences he probably had to brag about, Earth would have seemed like a momentary nightmare. Zim had been famous, he’d been exalted and martyred. He’d had his own line of alien merchandise, songs had been written about him. He was well known on the overnet and Dib had catalogued all of it.  
Dib was certain from all that that Zim wouldn’t even remember who he was, and that bitter thought made it so easy to justify wanting to go in there and treat Zim like nothing more than a test subject.  
  
He’d never wanted Gir to make it into the med bay and start bonding with his old master. He didn’t want Gir to get reattached to the Irken monster, who had treated him badly if Dibs own memory was anything to go off of. Gir was better off in his care, and Zim was better off split into segments that could be contained inside sealed glass jars for preservation and analysis.  
  
When the elevator opened the humming bright lab lights were on, Dib walked into a conversation between Gir and his former master. 

Zim was sitting in a lounging position, laid back somewhat against the wires that suspended him in fluid. He wore a pair of deep purple tights on his lower half, something the proud bug had likely requested to cover over his lower half shortly after waking. In his bare hand he held a half mushy clump of white cheddar popcorn pieces, which he idly had been popping into his mouth to munch upon. He was looking a little less skinny than he had before, no doubt on behalf of the Computer keeping his body fed constantly, and no thanks for his lightning quick hummingbird metabolism. But as the base had said, he still didn’t look quite back to his “usual” self as Dib knew it. There was a distinct lethargy to his motions, and the shapes of his bird-like cyborg bones poked out of his glimmery green skin at sharp angles that made Dib’s gut twist. Zim wasn’t supposed to look that weak.  
  
It was mystifying to Dib how Zim laid back idly listening to his former robot speak, looking almost zoned out from the way his eyelids drooped. Dib approached as quietly as possible to get a better look and listen in on some of what was conspiring between the ex-minion and master.  
“-yeah well then he tells me, he tells me my recipes are baaad actually, but they could be good, so he gives me this book, see? And there’s words init, the book’s got words for how to cook stuff,,,”  
  
“Mhmn, you always did better with uncomplicated instructions. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that problem out.”  
Zim gestures, speaking ungraciously of the person in question. He thought that no one deserved a pat on the back for giving Gir his own cookbook. He would have thought of the idea himself, eventually, if he hadn’t been so fixated on his mission.  
Girs job was assisting Zim and information retrieval, not learning how to take garbage earth food and turn it into a more complicated brew of the same gross scum.  
He sneered as he munched the handful of popcorn in his cheek with a look of dissatisfaction.  
“It’s clear to Zim that the lower life form left in charge of you wishes to waste your potential with this distraction. You’ve never cooked anything that wasn’t a total culinary disaster, Gir. To let it go on like this is a cruelty.”  
  
Gir pouts and crosses his arms, mad at Zim for not appreciating his hard work.  
“Nuh UHHH not **_cruuuuuuel_ ** !!!!! I’m fucking GREAT AT IT! I’ll show you!!!”  
And like that, in a sudden burst of defiant inspiration and need to impress Zim, Gir pops up, rolls up the top of his popcorn bag and runs out of the room with an angry and determined howl.  
  
Meanwhile, Zim is in the tube, gawking at Gir’s exit because he hasn’t heard a single swear come out of the servant drones lips in all his years of knowing him.

When Dib watches Zims big bright astonished eyes follow Gir out of the room, he can see that they are puffy and flushed, like a humans might be after crying. But there is no real way of knowing that. Zim is suspended in fluid. And Dib is pretty sure that Irkens just can’t reach that depth of emotion.  
Zims eyes follow Gir as the little robot passes by Dib and pushes his coat, then they follow up and up and up til they meet his face. Zims whole expression twists into one of irrefutable passionate loathing.  
Antenna on end, his teeth bared, his shoulders hunched, the beeping blood pressure monitor on the screens near Zims tube dings with increasing rapidity as the ex-invader bursts into loud ranting.  
“ _YOU_ !! **_FINALLY_ ** !!”  
The popcorn that had formerly been tightly clutched in Zims thin raptorial green hand was released, and the semisolid chunk bobbed around with the rest of the soggy snacks as it floated towards the bottom of the slime tank.  
Zims hands ball into tiny angular fists before he points a single accusatory claw in Dibs direction.  
“I would THINK that a captor of The Mighty Zim could have the diligence and courtesy to come down here with some PUNCTUALITY to face the architect of their demise!”  
  
Dib looked plainly towards one of the eye lenses of The House Computer, who simply did not react.  
Dib looked back at Zim.  
“So, you know who I a-”  
  
“ **_WHO ARE YOU_ ** ?? GET OUT OF MY BASE!! You're only going to taint it with your miserable germs and ruin its intricate structures with your blunt clumsy appendages- HOW DID YOU EVEN GET IN HERE?”  
  
Dib scoffed and wondered to himself how Zim wasn’t recognizing him by the prehensile sprig of hair jutting out the top of his head. Then again that had changed shape along with the rest of him as he’d aged. Dib felt his chest swell with smugness. His mouth twitched to grin broadly as he walked over to inspect the display screens and ignored Zims questions. The Irken had talked over him after all, he had not a single reason to be cordial.  
  
“HEY! HEY!!! ZIM IS TALKING TO YOU HUMAN! HOW DARE YOU IGNORE ME! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE DIB??”  
  
Dib could read the way the Irkens adrenal response had kicked in, fight or flight had been set off just by Dib’s standing there. He bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing at the giddy swirl of emotions that built up inside him. So Zim remembered him, huh? But he couldn’t recognize him? Dibs whole face buzzed with excitement that he could barely contain, that little detail made his whole demeanor flip from sullen to proud.  
  
“LET ME OUT OF HERE SO I CAN CHOKE YOU TO DEATH YOU SMUG PARASITE! I SEE YOU SMIRKING!”  
  
“Is that any way to talk to your savior, _Zim_ ?”  
He turned, grinning, hands folded behind his back. The irken reeled back in his tube, shielded himself with his arms, a spark of recognition in his eyes as he inhaled loudly.  
  
“MY WHAT?? LIAR!! My base saved me from the crash! It grabbed me with some kind of, leathery, catching arm.”  
  
“What? Fuck- no, I know you were passing out, but that’s the dumbest work around delusion-”  
Dib sighed in agitation, though his grin did not falter.  
“No. That was me. I pulled you out of the pool.”  
  
Zims face scrunched into a cringe, his antenna skewed, his balled up fist punched the glass hard as he let out a tiny frustrated “UGH!”  
“NO! YOU WOULDN’T! Why would you DO such a thing?? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT??? WHERE HAS DIB GONE??” 

Maybe Zim did realize who he was, but it wasn’t so long of a stretch to assume that Zim knew but was denying the truth. Especially in light of what had conspired the night before. Never in his life would one have thought of saving the other, and vice versa. It was a mistake on both ends, and if there was anything Zim was bad at, it was fessing up to a mistake.  
  
Dib, who had been holding back such bubbly feelings of elation in his gut, could not hold back anymore. He folded his arms over his stomach and let out a long creaking roll of laughter at Zims confusion.  
Dib bit his tongue, he swiped a tear from his eye and gestured for the floating chair to rise up from the floor and support him. It bounced a little as he neatly fell back into it.  
“You FUCKING moron! You still don’t know who I am?”  
  
But Zim did know. He looked all around himself as fear spiked in his body, he began to tremor, the mans name tumbled out of his lips.  
“Dib,,,, Dib?”  
Zim wheezed, he grabbed the top of his head and screamed angrily.  
“DIB??!! **_THE_ ** DIB? _YOU_ ?? IN _MY_ BASE?? **DIB** ?”  
  
Dib folded his hands in his lap and watched the telltale signs of Zim wigging out, he would internally note that not much had changed about Zims body language. It was just as he would have expected. In response to the surge of nostalgia he slouched comfortably into himself and chuckled condescendingly at the repetitive inquisition.  
“In the flesh. Really, you should have expected it. This much abandoned Irken technology all left in one convenient location unguarded and unmanned? I was bound to utilize it to my purposes.”  
  
“NO!! NOOOO!! LIAR!”  
Zim howled. Dib grinned and leaned back in the long backed chair, and let satisfaction wash over him as watched his old enemy spit out a winded tirade. Zim was counting off reasons on his 4 fingers trying to rationalize why **he** couldn’t be Dib, bubbles occasionally tumbled out of his mouth. As Zim shouted his voice echoed off the walls of the cavernous machine room, which hummed deeply around them.  
“Gir **WARNED ME** that Dib was here, skulking about my base getting his nasty sticky little _hannndsss_ on my things. But **you** AREN’T Dib! If you were Dib you would be shorter than Zim, your head would be so disproportionate to your body that it would take but a strong gust of wind to topple you, your voice wouldn’t be _so deep_ and your _FACE WOULDN’T BE SO UGLY_ !!”  
  
Dib laughed. He couldn’t help but laugh! And it sure did piss off Zim that he wasn’t taking things more seriously.  
“No, Zim. I’m not lying! And you can clearly see that I’m comfortably settled in here. I’ve been here for, oh, most of a decade now. After I got Gir and the base, they actually swore their allegiance to me under-- wait, hang on. I’ll show you.”  
Dib turned to face the camera lens on the wall with a bright wide split grin.  
“Base, under what rule are you my property, and how long have you been operating under my command?”  
  
To which the base impassionately replied.  
“By law of conquest, upon repair and resetting the central power structure of this micro fortress, this base and its components have belonged to Earthling Dib for 7 years, 1 month and 18 days.”  
  
Zim was practically frothing at the mouth with anger, nearly flabbergasted, his brain was a mess of crossed and frayed wires. Like a cornered animal, Zim lashed out at the glass with claws and howls.  
“IT WASN’T YOURS TO TAKE!!! I WAS ONLY GONE FOR A LITTLE WHILE!”  
  
“A LITTLE WHILE?”  
Dib chuffed angrily.  
“13 years! 13 fucking years you were gone! Do you even know how large of a chunk of human life that is? Look at me!!”  
Dib sat up, the chair rocked under him as he gestured wildly to his whole entire body. And Zim did give him another quick look over.  
  
He had facial hair. He had bags under his eyes. He had big hands and a longer face, and he was so despicably tall. Zim faced the fact he’d missed a massive chunk of Dibs pupation with a twinging knife-in-gut feeling he didn’t fully understand the meaning of. Zim hissed out a mouthful of swearing in Irken and crossed his arms over his chest.  
“So, _what_ , you germinated into another one of the taller yet equally stupid adults of your kind? Big fucking deal. I’ve seen more impressive evolutions from ground dwelling maggots. Actually, you look even slimier than before. I bet you SMELL EVEN WORSE than you used to, Stink Weasel.”  
  
Dibs mind could not get over the hurdle of how incredibly childish Zim still sounded. It was hard to take his insult seriously, especially since he was trapped inside a thick glass beaker. Dib shrugged off Zims ire and spoke in a laissez faire tone as he replied.  
“Oh yeah? If I’m so stupid then how is it I was able to break into your base and take control over everything, Space Boy?”  
  
“DUMB LUCK!! SHEER, STUPID, DUMB LUCK!!”  
Zim waved Dib off.  
“What are you doing here right now anyway? I thought humans were supposed to have school every other day, or jobs, or something.”  
  
“Oh, your base provides me with everything. And I’m looong past the age where school means anything to me. I graduated high school. That dismal torment is long behind me now.”  
  
“YOU GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL?”  
Zim barked back, some small amount of displeasure on his expression betrayed his investment.  
“So you’ve already had prom???”  
  
“Yes Zim. I’ve had prom.”  
Dib was not surprised to see that Zim was getting upset, he’d been through Zim’s computer and he knew of all Zim’s highschool related plans. His nemesis had wanted to control the entire student body through social clout alone as some kind of hellish queen bee. He’d wanted to be popular and powerful, and use all of that to make Dibs life hell.  
Which was why he felt like bragging about prom, to twist the bitter spike of missed opportunity deeper into Zim’s skinny gut.  
“High school was so good. I learned so many new things about how the world works, about the governments here on earth, about infrastructure and math and how to blend into society. And then at the end of it all, Prom was pretty much the best thing ever! Actually I went with Gretchen, it was….” 

Although he had been lying through his teeth, Dib was almost honest for a moment. He was going to say “totally miserable”, but Zim didn’t deserve to know that.  
In High School he hadn’t learned shit all he hadn’t been able to figure out on his own, he hadn’t made any long lasting friends. There was an urge to tell his old nemesis of how he’d struggled and triumphed, but Zim would get too invested in his pain to care about anything other than how he had suffered. Dib didn’t need another voyeuristic spectator of his pathetic existence peeping in on his life, laughing at what a miserable social outcast he’d grown and twisted up into. Dib inhaled, and set his hands on his hips as he confidently spun his false tale of triumph.  
  


“It was great! I had an awesome time. We all did! There was a bouncy castle, a DJ, spiked punch, a dog fighting ring outside- and Torque got crowned Prom King. Without you here to ruin everything, all of my schooling has been a cake walk.You wouldn’t believe how many friends I’ve made since you disappeared!!!”  
  
“TORQUE?? FUCKING SMACKEY? THAT UGLY SLAB OF RAW MEAT GOT TO BE **KING** ??”  
Zims stiff antenna twitched, his teeth grit in irritation. He punched the glass again. And screamed to the ceiling of his holding tank.  
“NO!! **_NOOOOOOO_ ** !”  
There was agony in the warble of his voice as it began to hit him, the weight of time, the experience of years of missing out on things he wanted. Zim’s spooch ached with the loss of what could have been, and he had to stifle it all behind a thick mist of anger for the sake of not looking weaker than he already did.  
Dib didn’t deserve to know how much it had meant to him, once upon a time.  
“UGHH!! CURSE THIS VILE PLANET FOR MOVING SO QUICKLY!! I HAD SO MUCH PLANNED FOR HIGH SCHOOL!”  
  
“Oh, I know.”  
  
“You whahh?”  
Zim looked stunned, and personally offended. How could Dib possibly know? How could he understand the opportunities lost to him? Dibs following words felt like a colony of baby spiders had burst free of their egg sack, and were skittering quickly down his spine with their prickly newborn legs .  
  
“You think I broke into the base without snooping around in your private files Zim? You think I don’t know everything about you? How your mission was fake, or about _all_ the things you had planned to destroy this planet and ruin my life. You think I wouldn’t slog through all those long winded video diaries you made, shit talking your tallests and fellow invaders?? I had all the time in the world to do it, Zim, I’ve seen all of it!!”  
  
  
“A-ALL OF IT???”  
Zim recoiled and pulled back in grimacing mindless terror.  
The worst of all possible scenarios had taken place when he wasn’t looking, just as he’d feared. Not only had Zim lost his tallest, he'd lost the faith of his allies, he'd lost his base- he’d lost the privacy of withholding the most scandalizing of his past secrets from Dib, who would no doubt weaponize them. It was so appalling to Zim that he outright refused to believe it. Dib was bluffing. He had to be! Zim bolstered himself with his shrinking rage and shouted back;  
“NEVER!!!! THE BASE WOULDN'T REVEAL ZIM LIKE THIS!! ALL OF THE PLANS AND FILES??? **All Of It**??? EVERYTHING??”  
  
“EVERYTHING!!”  
Dib stood, enthused and wide eyed. He slapped his hands onto the glass and pressed himself to it as he screamed victoriously. The chair slowly descended back into the floor behind him. 

“I KNOW EVERYTHING YOU LEFT IN THIS PILE OF ELECTRONIC WASTE! I even know about what you got up to when you were dragged back into space! It wasn’t even difficult, seeing as your face has been plastered across the overnet for years now.”  
  
“NO!!”  
Defiant to the bitter end, Zim attempted not to think of what Dib had come to glean on him through the rumors on social media and news coverage. Who knew what gossip the restless rumor mill of the overnet had Dib believing?? The lies and the slander, and the backwards idolization of his time spent as a mouthpiece, none of the hearsay factored in what he himself had felt, or the truth of what he had experienced in his time off Earth.  
To think that Dib had researched into his life and _still_ not tried to undermine him or reach out in any way, made Zim frazzled, and caused his disjointed mind to broil in its own violated anger.  
“THEN **WHY** DIDN’T YOU POST WHAT YOU FOUND AS BLACKMAIL? HUH? IF YOU’RE SO SMART!!”  
Zim barked, grasping at straws for something to be right about, anything that didn’t involve him realizing and recognizing the severity of his situation.  
  
“Because Zim, I didn’t want some vengeful team of Irken Elites flying anywhere near Earth to destroy this place just to spite you. I’ve extracted so much information about your kind off of _this_ base, that I should have some kind of degree in Irken biology by this point. I could be a doctor, I could be a PAK technician, I would blend in SEAMLESSLY if I were going to invade your shitty facist space rock.”  
  
The Base cut in, clearing its non existent throat.  
“Actually, you’ve never even had your hands on a PAK before. Or an Irken. So it’s all theoretical knowledge.”  
  
“SSHHHHH!!”  
Dib snapped as he looked at the camera lens.  
“NOT HELPING! SHUT UP WHEN I'M MONOLOGUING!”  
  
“I’m not going to help you lie to him. This crap is making him freak out as it is.”  
  
“ **NO** , IM NOT!!”  
Zim insisted as he sat upright with eyes wide and antenna bolt upright as they quaked in fear.  
“ **ZIM IS FINE** !! I’VE NOT BEEN SHAKEN!”  
He claims as he shivers. He puts a stop to it by folding his arms and legs again.  
“I’ve been in worse situations than this! So what? You’ve been stalking me, you’ve always been stalking me Dib, it’s sad to me that you haven’t moved on with your life. Wasn’t that what you wanted?”  
  
Zim squinted, sending a scathing glare Dibs way as the human took a step back from the glass to mirror Zims arms crossed pose.  
  


\--  
Both of them remembered. 

That night before Zims disappearance, they’d had an altercation on the roof of Dibs home as he had been stargazing. Not listening for alien signals, not researching on his laptop. Just sitting up on the roof of his home and looking out into the stillness of the milky way. Dib remembered the feeling of hopelessness welling in the bottom of his chest, his father not believing him after such a devistating supernatural event took place right in front of his eyes. What chance did Dib even have at trying to get him to see the truth? All he wanted to do was fight alongside his father to keep their family safe. 

  
As he had wallowed in his profound sadness, Zim had scaled the side of Dibs home to harass him. He ignored Dibs tears and shouting for him to leave, just to claim that the tallest would be back and that Dib hadn’t won. Zim didn’t know what to do with Dibs sadness. He hadn’t known not to be angry at his rival for freely expressing his anguish. It was Zim who should have been allowed to sob and cry and wallow in his own pit of despair.  
  


Instead, Zim had claimed that he’d never give up trying to make the planet his, for the glory of the empire, for the glory of his own name.  
Then things escalated. They had fought, fist on fist. Kicks had been landed and blood drawn, and by the end of all the hand to hand combat Zim had been thrown from the roof. He’d landed on the hood of the professors car and left a dent in the hood. He’d looked up at Dib and the stars, and listened to the boy tell him;  
“ZIM I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN! IM GIVING UP ON THIS! ALL OF THIS-FOR REAL THIS TIME! You’ll never take over this planet you incompetient idiot! All you’re good at is sabotaging yourself, and ruining the lives of EVERYONE you interact with! I’VE HAD MORE THAN ENOUGH OF IT FOR A LIFETIME!”  
  
Zim had broken portions of his spine and a leg from the fall. He’d had to sneak through the alleyway to make it home safe. He’d ignored Dibs claims of ignoring him entirely, trusting that there was no real repercussion to them. Empty threats were a language both boys spoke fluently.  
There was no way either of them could have known the caustic weight that interaction would carry. Zim had taken it with him through space and time. He’d worn down to believe it all when Dib hadn’t used Tak’s ship to rescue him from his stay in prison. 

\--  
  
After a tense and glaring silence between them, Zim asked bitterly the question that had stuck pinned in his mind after all that time.  
“Why didn’t you come after me?”  
  
Dib scowled at the Irken and looked away from him for a moment. Maybe Zim deserved to know. Dib hated recounting the past for any reason, but Zim looked at him with big, scared, lost, red eyes so uncharacteristic of himself. He was desperate and scrawny and defensive. What did Dib stand to lose by being a little bit honest?  
He huffed as he gave in to his pity and then confessed himself.  
“BECAUSE. I didn’t want to at first.”  
  


Zims antenna drooped and Dib noticed it with the sharp prickling of something like guilt. He defended himself adamantly.  
“I thought it was like before when you disappeared! I thought you would make it back on your own! I wasn’t allowed to just- stop living my life because you were gone, Zim. No one was going to let another depression spiral fuse me to my desk chair again. So, I tried to focus on science and school and improving my social image and being normal and like, HAVING FRIENDS that actually liked me! Maybe that’s hard for you to understand. I know Irkens don't have friends, and even if they DID- you think the universe revolves around you. But when you left....I just wanted to improve my life.”  
  
Instantly Zim was upset, he was upset in a way he didn’t know he could be upset. He’d spent months hurtling alone through the blackness of space with nothing to eat and nothing to think about but his past life and getting back to it. To think that Dib had tried to get over him, had tried to get over the unforgettable Zim? That was an inexcusable betrayal. Zims expectations were dashed, and he cast a snarling uncaring pout Dibs way as he stuck up his non-existent nose at the human.  
“PHEH. PATHETIC. I can see how successful that all turned out. “  
Zim parried back, unsympathetic as he reveled in his own bitter anger. Move on without him? Who gave Dib the right to forget him? How could ANYONE forget **him** ?  
“I don’t care about your pitiful attempt to try and forget Zim, I want to know WHY you didn’t fly out after me when you realized I wasn’t coming back!”  
  
Dibs hackles raised, he spat back.  
“I WAS GETTING TO THAT! Fuck you’re still so impatient.”  
Dib slipped his bandaged hand back into his coat pocket and casually scratched the stubble on his chin with the other.  
“So when I was living my life as a regular supergenius civilian, my dad took it upon himself to remove all my old paranormal stuff from the garage. That means all the evidence I had compiled, all the things I’d gathered from our fighting- and TAKs’ ship? All gone. I came home from school one day and watched my old man talk to a contractor outside of the garage about renovating it into a workshop or something-doesn’t matter. Point is, when I started to get back into my paranormal studies, I didn’t have the fucking ship anymore.”  
  
Zim grinned wide as he imagined Dib losing everything, the taste of retroactive justice was simply _too sweet_ on his tongue and he laughed. 

“HE SOLD OFF AN IRKEN ZOOK AT A YARD SALE???? YOUR ONLY SPACECRAFT??? WHILE YOU WEREN’T WATCHING? HAWWWWW THAT’S RICH!”  
The Irken cackled, his spite fueled snicker escalated till he was kicking his feet and howling. 

Dibs frustrations overwhelmed him as he waited impatiently for Zim to stop, and in a split second of anger he lashed out and punched the glass from the outside to shut him up.  
“ **QUIET** ! He didn’t know how important it was to me!”  
  
Zim giggled, he bit his tongue, his insides bubbled with pleasant pearls of spite.  
“Oh, but what if he did Dib? He knew you would cycle back to what you had always cycled back to. You don’t give your parental unit as much credit as he deserves, Dib. He knows how crazy you are. He was doing everything in his power to keep you from becoming this,,, gangly, revolting obsessive creature that you are. I can see you let him down. I can see that all his efforts were totally in vain. Oh, he must be so _disappointed_ in you, you greasy tragic shame of a creature. How unfortunate for him, to have a failure for an heir.”  
Zim tisked, he rested his chin in his hand and looked back at his ex nemesis with glee.  
  
Instead of rebuttal the Irkens insult was faced with a stony wall of silence that went on a beat too long. It dawned on Zim that he had taken things a step too far when Dib didn’t bother to banter back at him immediately. 

The man stood there, shoulders hunched, his face damn near unreadable if not for the cold detached look of hate in his eyes. So passionate it was impassioned. So full of pure, true despise that it was not the disarmament Zim craved to see from his enemy, but more fuel for a deep and unseen bonfire of loathing built high deep inside of Dib. Zim could not have known that much of that hate came from Dibs feelings towards the expectations of his forebearer.  
  
He looked so much taller as he straightened himself, and approached the glass with his arms folded behind himself.  
“He doesn’t feel much of anything anymore, actually. Except, maybe for the worms and maggots crawling out of his eye sockets.”  
  
Zim, scared, backed into the far wall of the tube and looked on Dib with apprehension. His antenna tilted with confusion, ego drained from his voice.  
“I,,, I don’t understand.”  
  
“He’s dead, Zim. He doesn’t have the consciousness to care about what I get up to anymore. He’s six feet under dirt and concrete, rotting down to nothing but splinters of bone, and he chose Gaz as his heir.”  
Dib leaned in close to the glass, words popping off his lips as he overanunciated them.  
“Kind of like you will be in a month or so. Only, no one is going to take the time to bury you. You’re nothing worth grieving. You’re no one worth remembering.”  
  


“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”  
Zim yelped back.  
“ZIM IS NOT DYING! Zim is well! Zim improves by the second! One more day in this healing pod and I’ll be able to rip you to ribbons!”  
  
“Will you?”  
Dibs breath began to fog the glass as his face cracked a cruel smile.  
“Last time I checked, the base was under my control. You’re not getting out of that tube without my saying so.”  
Dib gave a short laugh. He put his hands on his hips and his expression lightened into a kind of detached joy at his situation.  
“And, actually, come to think of it, you count as mine now too! I captured you, fair and square, so again, by rule of conquest that makes you mine to do whatever I want with!”  
  
Zim gawked, aghast at Dib and his statement, fear spiked in him and the monitor beeped rapidly.  
“NO! NO!! NO IT DOESN’T! IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!”  
  
“Oh? Why not? Is it because you’re no longer an Invader? Because last I checked, that doesn’t have FUCK ALL to do with my claims over something I captured!”  
  
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU CAN’T DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO ZIM! I’ll STOP YOU!”  
  
Dib laughed, the sound of it ugly and mean and loaded up with spite like a soggy sandwich with too many sauces.  
“You’ll stop me! You’ll stop me huh? How’re you going to do that? The Base won’t help you, Gir won’t help you, and you can’t help yourself! I know your PAK isn't working right anymore! You’re as helpless as a beetle on its fucking back, and do you know what I’m going to do to you while you’re belly up?”  
His hands reached up, they wiggled as he produced a tablet pen from his pocket, and used it to open up a file on one of the computer screens near Zims tube. As he turned it to face the broken down irken, Zim gasped sharply and turned away. He covered his eyes in fear but peeked through his fingers, as if distancing himself from it that way would somehow soften the blow.  
  
On the screen were a set of diagrams for how to pull an Irken apart, lists of tests he wanted to perform on different Irkens, coded text for different plots and plans. Anatomy exactly like Zims own, split into cross sections and segments in hand drawn illustrations, eyes bisected. A squeedly spooch opened up from the side to look at the sections of tissue inside it.  
Zim cringed hard. He felt sick, he bit his lip not to whimper and stammered in stubborn refute;  
“y-You can’t, you can’t do that!! You wouldn’t kill me just for that!!” 

  
“Wouldn’t I?”  
Dib left the screen in plain sight of Zim and traced the glass around Zim posessively.  
“Maybe that’s what I’ve wanted all this time. Doesn’t everyone want you dead anyways? Couldn’t I sell your body off to the highest bidder? I can’t imagine you traveled here under favorable conditions. You would have asked for a ship that could at least handle a terrestrial landing. You’re running from something. So, why shouldn’t it be me to put you out of everyone else's misery?”

  
“Shut up!! SHUT UP!!”Zim gripped the sides of his head and kicked the glass in front of Dibs face, and tried very hard not to look at the graphic medical illustration to his right.  
“It won’t kill Zim, pulling him apart like that!!” He growled.  
“Many have tried, so MANY have ripped me open- you’re not SPECIAL for wanting to do this, for threatening me- **I will outlive you** !!!!! **ZIM CANNOT BE DEFEATED BY THE LIKES OF YOU** !”  
  
The kick to the glass made Dib jump, but all he did was stand back up and casually put his pen away. He smiled, collectedly, at the power over life and death that he dangled in front of Zims very eyes.  
“Not a chance. You’ve already been defeated. But, maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t want you dead. Maybe I’d rather have you alive and conscious while I root around inside you, improving my knowledge of Irkens from your pitifully small anatomy.”  
  
The mention of his smallness made Zim shriek. In a flurry of clawed swipes at the glass Zim shut his eyes hard and tried to attack Dib, but the human continued.  
  
“You’ll be a shitty example for the anatomy of your kind, given how diminutive and deformed you are. And I can’t imagine how physically fucked up your brain will look when I go digging around in that, but I’m sure it’ll do until I fly off and find a better specimen.”  
  
“I HAAAAAAAATE YOU!!”  
Zim seethed. If Dib didn’t know any better, he’d seen the slightly lighter pink fluid surrounding Zims eyes that signaled the start of tears. But he did know better, and even if he didn’t, Zim deserved to suffer the nightmare of his now certain future.  
“I HATE YOU! **I WISH YOU HAD DIED! I WISH YOU WOULD DROP DEAD!** ”  
  
“Awwhhh, don’t be so upset Zim,”  
Dib fake pouted at him,  
“The day we met, you should have known this is how things were going to end. With you totally prone, and me standing over you, scalpel in hand, dragging your innards out piece by piece.”  
He breathed heavily on the glass while Zim scratched at him, and drew a little heart in the steam.  
“What was that you said earlier? In a day you were going to be strong enough to kill me? Great. Let’s schedule your operation for around 12 pm tomorrow. That should give me enough time to do everything I need to do with your insides.”  
  
“NOOOOOOOOO!!! NO YOU CAN’T **_YOU CAAAN’T_ ** !! NOT MY ZIM ORGANS!! NOT **_MY_ ** INSIDES YOU DON’T!!”  
Zim had broken down into hysterics. He was hurting himself with how hard he gripped his shoulders in an effort to hold himself, in an effort to self sooth. Dib could ignore Zims tears floating around inside the fluid, but he could not deny to himself exactly how terrified his promises left Zim looking. Small and weak and scared, like a spider curled up in its own web to look like nothing but a speck.  
  
Dib just smiled at him, not feeling bad at all.  
“Yup. All of your organs. I’m going to get my hands aaaaall over them.”  
  
Zim began to hyperventilate, muttering to himself and speaking to himself, breaking off into some mental tangent while Dib spoke to the base.  
  
“Computer, administer the Irken compatible opioid solution before Zim tries to do anything stupid. Also, keep him asleep til I decide I’m ready to deal with him. He should heal best that way.” 

  
“No no, no no no Zim is fine, Zim is FINE!! IM FINE!! YOU CAN’T!!”  
  
It was almost sad in a way, how Zim reached up and tried hard to pull the tubes out from his PAK before the computer could do as it was directed to do. He babbled nothing, he looked at Dib with hate even as he grew tired and drugged, as the sedative was administered into his veins, forcing him to pass out. The last thing Zim saw was Dib standing proud over him, he tasted the sterile gel which encased him. His mind tormented the promise of his useless demise swimming around in the back of his mind like a sharks fin through rough waters. One moment consciousness was there, and the next it was gone.  
  
At least this new tall Dib had the decency to threaten him properly before ripping him open.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to awkwardFawn here on A03 ( https://aporetic-elf.tumblr.com/) and Tia (https://priest-of-rage.tumblr.com/) for proofreading and assisting me in formulating this chapter 
> 
> Again the mighty Eligos (https://eligos-art.tumblr.com/) has blessed me with the lighting effects in the lab scenes for this update. THE BEAKER IS FUCKING STUNNING. UGH. IM SO GREATFUL. 
> 
> This wouldn't be the same without any of you! Thank you for helping! 
> 
> And thank YOU dear readers, for reading this :) <3 All your comments and kudos drive me to keep this freight train rolling uncontrollably forwards
> 
> For Space Trash Updates and au related illustrations check me out on izspacetrash.tumblr.com
> 
> For a more streamlined read through of the prologue comic, here's a link to the first page:  
> https://izspacetrash.tumblr.com/post/617862664951136256/spacetrash-pg-1-first-youre-there-next?is_related_post=1#notes


	4. Writhing Magenta, Exposure and Consequence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dib makes good on an old promise, causing Zim to relive what he wants to forget

Zim inhales deeply as he feels energy surge up through his chest. It radiates out from his gasploghus as a shock of adrenaline, administered through the back port of his PAK by some external source. Zim recognizes the sensation as something very different than being revived from the brink of death, yet it feels just as jarring. Like being shaken awake from a deep sleep.  
When his eyes snap open, they’re assaulted by a bright overhead light made of three white hot ring shaped bulbs. He squints at their assault and tries to turn his head to look away from their oppressive illumination. Disquietude washes over him like a crashing wave. He flinches in place as it sets him off. 

In his fit, Zim kicks his feet and throws his arms in an attempt to fling himself off of a chilly metal surface. He struggles as hard as he possibly can, but finds that there is not a single limb on him that he can budge or reposition. Only the curling of his fingers and toes, and the twitching of his antenna are left to him. It is laughably unhelpful. Zim snarls with trepidity as his eyes go wide.  
As he grunts and heaves and squirms, the thick metal shackles restraining his body pull and pinch and clamp him effortlessly down. He’s unlikely to hurt himself on them. He can feel their smooth warm interior grip like rubber gloves holding him down to the flat surface on his back. His arms and legs are held spread away from his body so that every part of him can be reached.  
  
Every naked part of him is exposed to that ever-glowing light, which burns its rings into his eyes so thoroughly. The three bright rings dance around the interior of his eyelids, and it is a brightness that not even the closing of his eyes can shut out.  
  
“GGGRRRHHH!!!” As Zim opens his eyes again, rage froths from his belly. He growls, and spits up his anxieties.  
“WHAT IS THIS??! WHERE AM I??”  
He makes his demands with clenched fists. His voice carries back to him with a loud echo and he assesses that he must be in some kind of long, cavernous chamber. His mouth tastes funny. Zim smacks his lips and rubs the roof of his mouth with his long tongue, trying to figure out what salty vaguely meat-smell-tasting thing could have possibly gotten in there. He does not remember the circumstances he was under when he was put into his chemically induced coma, not until he hears the human voice off to his left, talking to itself.  
  
“Computer, pull up screens 31J,31K,31L, and 31M. Begin filming from the overhead camera and the lens over my shoulder. Keep it focused on what my hands are doing.”  
  
“d-DIB???”  
Confusion is his response, but his recognition is instant. Though Dibs voice is deeper, that cadence is unmistakable. That tone is too pleased with itself, too excited to be some professional earth scientist. Zim can hear his own blood rushing through the veins of his antenna. He can feel his spooch like a nauseous lump in his throat. In his panic he gasps, and puts a name to that deeper, dreadful, regrettable voice.  
“DIB!”  
He’s certain now, as he watches the taller version of his long-lost nemesis lean over his bondage to gaze at him.  
  
From the corner of Zims restricted vision steps the strange haired human man. The Dib is decked out in what looks to be an all black lab coat, zipped down to his mid chest. On his forehead he wears a pair of industrial looking goggles with candy red lenses. Zim stares into Dibs pleased visage and through the reflection in the slick metalic eyewear, he sees himself laid out on one of his very own dissection tables, looking back through a ruby tinted filter.  
  
Dib asks Zim a question with a grin so wide and smug you would expect it to swallow up his eyes.  
“Nice of you to join us, Zim. Did you enjoy your rest? Are you feeling energized?”  
  
Zims response is a mighty bellowing roar of frustration. He tugs and he pulls on the shackles over his thighs and biceps and wrists and ankles. The one across his forehead is worst of all, for it prevents him from looking away from Dib, and refuses him the satisfaction of seeing an Irken elite squirm. 

Zim knows, he knows struggling and acting out is the worst possible thing you can do when captured by an enemy. It’s like sprinkling blood in the water before a Mecrobian Flesh Rending Cephalomorph, but he can’t help it. 

He needs to get away, **_he needs to get away_ **. He needs to not be a part of this- a part of his own end. 

It was the advent of all previous threats that Dib had ever made. The barking harmless puppy had sprouted into a full grown dog with dripping fangs and powerful crushing jaws, and was ready to make good on all its past promises. Dib Monster was practically foaming at the mouth with his need to see Zim split open. 

In his panic Zim attempted to access the tools of his PAK, but instinct did not account for the many ways in which his PAK had been disabled. Firstly, there were parts of it that had not been usable for a very long time. Secondly,his PAK was locked back into a slot on the table behind himself, which would have prevented his lashing out anyways. 

These reasons combined,neutralized his ability to give Dib the gruesome death he was _BEGGING_ for. In that moment, Zim was thinking of running him through both eyes with two very sharp spider legs. What a pity.  
“ZIM WILL RIP OFF YOUR TREACHEROUS LIMBS, AND STUFF THEM UP YOUR ODIOUS HOLES!!” 

  
  
“Oh, you sure sound like you slept well.”  
Dib responds to the screaming and grunting by picking his ear, as if he’d just received hearing damage.  
  
“YOU’RE THE MOST DESPICABLE OF ALL LIVING LIFE FORMS, DIB!”  
Zim shouts from his chest, ignoring now how he is starting to feel an all over body tremble. It is the chill of fear, and he won’t let it overtake him, he refuses.  
“Zim returns to his base for peace, returns here seeking REFUGE from those who would see him dead, and what is here? YOU. GETTING IN THE WAY OF MY PLANS. Ruining what little remains of my chance to escape intact! You should have just kept to your life as a corn sucking **_civilian_ ** .”  
Zim hisses the insult, to make sure Dib knows just how disgusting his parasitic actions are, but the human looks undeterred.  
  
“Really?” Dib scoffs, the insult doesn't so much as dent him. Zim knows then that he needs to dig a lot deeper to see Dib flinch.  
“You think I’m going to believe that you want peace? I know you better than that, Zim. Even if your goal was to come here and live in a way you considered to be peaceful, you’d probably end up hurting humans by proxy of your actions. Who’s to say that your version of peace doesn’t involve subjugating the planet and making it into your own _New Zim Empire_ ?”  
Dib mocks Zim with his tone, his fingers make air quotations. As if the idea of a New Zim Empire is laughable!  
Zim hisses with fury, Dib continues.  
“You’re incapable of being peaceful, and someone really should bring your reign of terror to a halt.”  
Dib looks over Zim like a vulture would over rotting, roasting carrion. The way his lips curve and curl over his yellow teeth, the way he tilts his head, the way his eyes explore Zims, looking at the big wet white fettid orbs. He ignores Zims personhood as if the Irken is already dead.  
  
He notices the stiff way that Zims antennae are poised, perked up, slightly back, as if Zim were about to launch into hands-on combat. Dib knows the expression well, and he smiles down at Zim fondly as he responds.  
“The day you landed on this planet, Zim. The day you met me, you should have known that this is how things were always going to end.”  
Dib set his fingers on Zims lower stomach, and the Irken yipped in response. The long cold fingers walked their way up his bare exposed front, and made Zims healthy green dermis twitch as if flinching to try and get away.  
“You on your back, and me standing over you, wondering if it’s worth it to keep you alive long enough to run a few tests using your pathetic tiny body.”  
  
“I’LL SHOW YOU PATHETIC YOU UGLY MOOCHER!!!”  
Zim spat, his antennas pitched far forwards as his face flushed angrily. 

Dib smiled, so fucking pleased with himself that he could now use Zims shortness as an insult and see it sting him in a meaningful way. 

As Zim once again tried to kick and punch his way out of unyielding metal restraints, his memory of the day before all flooded back, at least the important parts. Like how Dib had possessed his base by right of conquest. That Dib was trying to lay claim over Zim himself. And that Dib had promised to cut him open and use his body to prove the existence of Irkens. Zim screamed in fear and struggled hard.  
  


When the table didn’t so much as tremble under him, Zim let out a guttural, heart-wrenching screech of total desperation.  
“THIS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH!! I WON’T PLAY THESE GAMES WITH YOU!!! We have bigger problems right now than your mangling of my perfect innards, and by we I mean ZIM and ZIM ALONE! You are wasting what little time I have to repair my PAK! Zim will be hunted down and you will be obliterated in the explosive crossfire!”  
  
“Oh sure, yeah, just let me put away all these cameras and tools I got out for this and reconsider my world saving plans for the sake of your comfort.” Dib scoffed.  
“You’re a chronic liar Zim, you have no reason to be honest with me. There’s no way that I’m going to change my life-long project over a possible-maybe scenario where something could be threatening me.”  
The human taunted, as if thinking out loud.  
Although, in his brain Dib did lend some credence to the reality that Zim was likely on the run from something; Whether that was assassins or Irken enforcers or whatever, there was probably ample time to at least do what he wanted to do to Zim, and Dib wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. There Zim was, laid for him like a king’s feast on a silver platter. What was he supposed to do? Resist the temptation? Fat fucking chance.  
  
Zim, panicked, screamed again and launched into insults. His face flushed with pink blooded rage as he angrily bared his teeth.  
“YOU ARE SUCH AN IRRITATING PAIN TO ME!! THIS COULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY IF NOT FOR YOUR MEDDLING!! Tell me Dib. Do you really think any one of your kind is going to appreciate a video where you pull me apart? Won’t they think it’s fake? Won’t they just think it’s all special movie effects, huh? It was so EASY for them to debunk the rest of your paranormal studies, ZIM KNOWS!! **_ZIM_** _HAS SEEN IT_!! This will hit the wall like a ladle full of wet soggy gruel, and you’ll be left with nothing- **AND WITH A DEAD ZIM**!! THE **WORST** OF **ALL** **POSSIBLE OUTCOMES**!”  
  
“Oh, that’s why I’m not just taking a video.”  
Dib would raise a scalpel up into the light where Zim could see it, and he’d turn it over in his hand tauntingly as he spoke.  
“I’m going to take samples of your organs while I’m in there. A little sliver here and there to test and study, might even take some larger chunks for further analysis and preservation.”  
  
Zim was clearly mortified and sickened to hear this, but Dib continued as he looked on, his mouth twisted open and aghast. The colour draining from his hot face.  
  
“But don’t worry, I’ve decided it’s worth it to keep you alive. After all, you traveled all this way just to see me again. It’d be so sad to waste your life in cold blood like that. After we’ve known each other for **_so_** long.”  
Dib pulled over a cold floating tray covered in ice, upon which sat a small group of plump fresh human organs. A heart, a liver and a stomach.  
“And if I killed you, I’d have nothing to do with these shiny new organs!”  
  
“WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE??”   
Zim screamed, his eyes and lip crinkled in disgust.  
  


“That’s not important,”  
He’d wave Zim off dismissively and cover the organs back over with the cloth.  
“What _is_ important, is that I am going to graft them to your squeedilly spooch, and we are going to see what your body does with them!”  
Dib is thrilled, he folds his hands into each other and watches as Zim reviles him.  
  
“FOOLISH DIB!!! My innards will reject your worthless human organs, your efforts will not only go in vain when you show them to your kind, but your experiment will fall flat on its face before you! Zims body is no organ incubating vessel!"

  
Dib laughed the ex invader off as he pushed his tool tray up to the table practically vibrating with excitement.  
“We’ll see about that. I know your body has HELD human organs inside it before, and you didn’t die from that. Grafting them to your squeedilly spooch shouldn’t be any different, if you’re so advanced.”  
  
Zim wanted to kick out of his shackles. Now that he was aware of the organ tray and everything on it, he could finally pinpoint the source of the wet blood smell that had tainted the air with it’s metallic essence. He could taste the wet ape flesh in his mouth, and wanted to throw up.  
“YOU CAN’T KNOW THAT FOR SURE!! **YOU MIGHT STILL KILL ZIM** !!! YOU MIGHT TOXIFY ME WITH YOUR HUMAN MEATS!”  
  
“That’s why it’s called an experiment, Zim. You were a scientist once, weren’t you? You understand the concept of risk versus reward. Either way, I’m getting what I always wanted.”  
Dib pulls out a marker and Zim watches him uncap it with his blunt teeth before pressing the tip of it to the center of Zims chest. He drags the first short line, then the next one, then the next one, and Zim sucks air through his teeth and tries not to yelp at each one. Fear leaking back into him, bravado burning off as Dib speaks.  
“I wonder what colour you’re going to be inside. Are you going to be like a tiny fuzzy watermelon, all green on the outside, all pink and gooey and juicy on the inside?”  
  
  
“ _EEEU_ **_CCCGGHK_ ** !!! LIKE I WOULD TELL YOU!! If you know so much about Irkens you shouldn’t even haaaave to ask Zim that!!”  
Zim gagged, REVOLTED by the comparison, and tried to kick his feet as Dib twirled the marker in his hand with a happy little flourish. The human capped it again before placing it back in his coat pocket.

  
Dib laughs loudly as he grabs both of Zims hips, animalistic and not entirely thinking, he snarls as he leers over his captive and he speaks through his grit teeth.  
“ **I** ** _DO_** **know** , Zim!! I just want to see it for myself, in PERSON. After all, nothing beats the thrill of personal experience.”  
He pulls back, and lets his shoulders fall lax. He reminds himself that he is a professional. No matter how much personal enjoyment he takes from seeing Zim laid prostrate beneath him, he can’t deviate from the procedure. His hands hover over Zims birdlike nipple-less chest as Dib mutters softly to himself , theorizing about how the skin will fold naturally once it is pulled open.  
“Out and away, out and away, clamps should hold it,”  
  
Zim flinches forcefully and bites his lip, as if he believes Dib is going to puncture through his skin with his bare hand. That hand is so large and textured with experience. That hand that is undoubtedly Dibs own graspy weasley appendage, but jumbo sized. The Irken looks like he’s just seen a ghost as Dib pulls back from him and pulls up his mask.  
  


“WHAT ABOUT GIR??” Zim stammers, persistently looking for a reason for Dib to stop what he was doing.  
“Gir will break into the lab, he will involve himself with this process _somehow_ . It doesn’t matter if you locked up the lab! That metal demon will worm his way down through the garbage chute, he’ll break in through the vents-- he is not deterred by locks or commands!”  
  
Zim watched Dib give an exaggerated roll of his eyes and tilt his head to one side as he gave an exasperated sigh.  
“I’ve been living with Gir for awhile now, Zim. I know how to placate him. If it makes you feel any better about this, I’ve got him in the living room watching a marathon of Gentleman Jerks Academy of Freaks, which should keep him busy for at least 8 hours. If not, there’s money on the coffee table for him to go out and buy a Monkey Suckee (™) or something.”  
Dib set his hands on Zims shoulders to hold his back flat to the table. The movement of Dibs hands pressing his body down made him aware of how tense and hunched up they had been. For a moment Zims angry eyes widened as he looked up at Dib.  
“You’re not going anywhere, and nothing is going to stop me from doing what I’m going to do to you. You accept that, and it’s going to make this so much easier. Just give up, Zim. I know you’re capable of it.”  
  
The very suggestion that he would EVER give up made Zims skin bristle with aggression and disgust. On his back or not, he wouldn’t be told when he was supposed to give up, even if it was for his own good. 

“ **NEVER**!! THIS IS CRASS AND ARCHAIC OF YOU, MAN DIB!- You _doooon’t_ _NEEEEED_ to do this to Zim!! I have x-ray machines. You can just use those to look inside me! You could take samples from outside of my perfect Irken belly!!!”  
  
“This isn’t about being able to just SEE it Zim, this is about getting to feel it.”  
Dib sprays Zims chest with some off-orange disinfectant and uses a microfiber cloth to spread it out over the incision area. The cloth in his hand gently swiped over Zims chest and stomach. Dibs gloved shiny fingers slid over Zims skin, conforming to the shape of him. Dib could not help but compare the size of his hands to the width of Zims torso, and marveled at the smallness of the Irken. He would need a steady, careful hand, to do what needed to be done. Like doing surgery on a cat. The challenge of it caused his insides to tingle with excitement, and made his lips twinge up into a grin. He reveled in the fact that he could do it. He’d had enough practice on sheep and squirrels and pigs and other things. Irkens were laid out a little differently, but the general concept was the same.  
  
Dib inhaled deeply and took in the chemical smell with a soft smile.  
“It’s about getting to hear you cry and whine and SUFFER. Getting to take pieces of you OUT and put pieces of human IN.”  
  
  
Dib set down the cloth he’d wiped the incision surface with, and left a kind of cold wet feeling in its chemical smelling wake. Zim inhaled sharply, his antennas twitched restessly as Dibs actions wound the coil of his anxiety tighter and tighter, as if seeking out some unseen exit. The touch revolted him, and Zim would have given anything to get out of the position he was in.  
By the time Dib was done panting his canvas, Zim was shivering all over like a tiny dog, snarling and cursing.  
“YOU WON’T DO IT!! YOU WON’T!! PUSSY!! YOU COWARD!! NOT EVEN LETTING ZIM UP TO FIGHT YOU PROPERLY BEFORE CLAIMING UNDUE VICTORY! YOU SNAKE!! YOU LEECH!! YOU VILE SPINELESS BLOOD WORM!”  
Zim went wide-eyed and started breathing shallowly, every neuron in him firing panic as he thought of having those nasty germy human organs inside him, having Dibs clumsy giant ape hands touching his spooch.  
  
  
Zim wanted to rattle the table with his wriggling. He wanted to split open the ceiling with the volume of his shouting. He wanted to turn from scared animal into neutron bomb- but he was no more than a frog pre-dissection, all pinned and laid out for Dibs knife to make a mess of. He was frightened. He was terrified. He was a little bit of something else that was hard to place, something like excitement, something borderline suicidal. A little voice crying for punishment sounded off in him, and with it thoughts of finally being useful to SOMEBODY for SOMETHING that he couldn’t fuck up somehow. He would become an incubator for rotten human organs that would eventually turn toxic and rot him from the inside out, and then horribly and painfully, he would die. Finally.  
  
As Dib pulled the lenses of his goggles over his eyes, the lump in Zims throat made him choke out another frustrated growl, and he pinched his eyes shut.  
“IT’S NOT FAIR! THAT’S NOT HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO GO!!! IT’S ALL WRONG!!”  
  
“Ohhhh, but Isn’t it? Why would I want to fight my one and only test subject? The whole point of putting you under was so that you could heal and I’d get the best possible results out of you. Beating you up goes entirely against all of that. I want you in near perfect condition for my studies.”  
Dib smiled and Zim couldn’t see the mad crinkle in his eyes, but he could hear the croaking, giggling laughter as Dib zipped the lab coat slowly all the way up to its high mouth and nose covering collar. He could feel the cold chill of the metal blade pressed to his chest, the tip of the scalpel to the center of his body. Then, Dib’s covenant of tearing him apart was made material.  
  
“NO!! NO!! DON’T! -- ** _WAIT_**!!”  
The last word was all but squeaked out of his throat as pressure weighed down on him. Zim could focus on nothing but the lights. He couldn’t even turn his head to watch where the medical blade was slicing. But he could feel it as Dibs finger pushed the blade in and down onto him, into his skin, splitting the flesh. Dib caused Zims fists to clench and the Irken invader flinched with the pain.  
  
Zim, wide eyed, stared ahead of himself into the blinding light.  
“ **No** nonono!! _OOOOOHHH_ -”  
He sucked though his teeth and babbled as he felt the blade edge begin to pull down and down, burning and throbbing and stinging the whole way with its cold effortless touch. Dib cut his front as if he were holding a knife and pulling through butter. So steady was his hand that Zim couldn’t even berate him about trembling. He was screaming his throat raw instead.  
“VILE PARASITE!! **WRETCHED. UGLY. BASTARD.** SHIT-DIB! STOP AT ONCE!”  
  
“Funny that you think you can tell me what to do while you’re laying on your back, all exposed and _totally_ _vulnerable_. Maybe if you weren’t stupid, you would beg me to be gentle. Maybe you would beg me not to make it hurt, or to be quick- but no. You choose to keep insulting me, you total fucking moron.”   
Dib scoffed, undeterred.  
“Typical.”  
  
Zim could feel it as Dib dragged the blade farther, down the center of his chest and pulled his skin open as if he were unzipping a coat. Zim screamed bloody murder as his pink life essence began to pool out of the wound. Dib ignored his horrified wailing and continued to pull the line, his free hand held over Zims body, the straps holding Zim relentlessly against the table so that he could not even flinch his belly away as Dibs tool pressed in on him. The scalpel blade traced, it traced beyond the lower middle of his belly, and out across his hip bones, the blade itself just barely nicking the muscles of Zims Tymbals as it pulled over them.  
  
Zims whole front burned and bled with its cuts, and he hissed and he flinched, but he did not break. This was nothing and he had faced worse before. As Dib cut into him and the lights overhead blinded him, Zim was thinking of this, and those times before when he had braved worse.  
“YOU THHHINK THIS HURTS ME-DIB?”  
Zim let out a short roll of hacking ugly laughter as Dib pulled out a pair of clips off the instrument tray out of view.  
“You don’t know HALF the things that’ve hurt Zim! This?? THIS IS NOTHIIING!”  
  
Dib smiled down at his mark as he used a thin tool to get under the skin flap incisions that he had created. As he lifted Zims skin off his rib cage, he cut underneath to loose those skin flaps and the fat attached to them from the bones. As he moved downwards this required more finesse, so as to not prematurely rip his way into Zims thick walled organ sack.  
Zims laughter stopped.  
  
The Irken squeaked and bit his tongue, his eyes crossed with the overwhelming shocking sensation. He cringed and twisted in pain trying not to scream out as he felt the fibers of his skin being pulled away from all the things inside himself that he should have been able to ignore. But as Dib continued, he could feel air against his ribs as a constant stinging. He could feel his skin touching itself, folding back on itself unnaturally and be held in place by weighted surgical clips on the corners of his bent open dermis.  
“UgghhHH HHHNNGG--”  
It was an animalistic grunt he let out as Dib pulled the skin open, down past his rib cage and out beyond his hips, til the skin of his interior organ sack and the muscle of his tymbals were revealed. All of it laid out to the air felt as you would expect. It felt as if Zims whole front had been cut and laid open, and his entire belly was aflame with undeniable burning. Behind him, Zims PAK whirred loudly to keep him alive by boosting the manufacturing of his pink blood cells, as well as boosting his production of antibodies to counteract any disease or infection that might have been caused by his organs' exposure to external toxins.  
  
In Zims anguish the tiny internal voice of melancholic self-hate grew louder; the one claiming that he deserved to feel that way for all the pain and destruction that he himself had caused. He deserved to be nothing more than entertainment for his betters, if not some kind of freak lab animal defective. 

_You’re barely an Irken._

It told him in a voice not his own. One that his memory could barely place. _  
  
_

_You’re not worth anything more than a boisterous novelty._  
  


In his head Zim could see the flashback image of an Irken face with cold, royal purple eyes. As Dib dipped down in front of the bright blinding surgical light to look at the expression on Zims face, he cast a long consuming shadow over his victim.   
The two images of nightmare past and terrifying reality blended into one confusing mono-present of current and past events.  
  
“Yeah? This isn’t the worst thing you’ve ever felt, huh?”  
Dib smarmed while smirking. With a gloved hand he traced two fingers over Zims exposed rib cage, feeling the trails of gore and muscle between each bone, making Zim cough as he Pressed lightly on it to compress his interior air sacks.  
“That’s a pretty mindless reaction to be having to something that feels like NOTHING, Zim. Don’t act like this isn’t putting you out of your mind with fear. I can see it on your face. I can hear it in your breath, you hate this.”  
  
Zims coughing partway shook him out of his double vision, and yet the hallucination stuck. He could smell the lab and he could smell the Dib’s stress sweat and the disinfectant. He could smell the med bays’ dank overture. But at the same time, over that he could smell the dewy wet rot of space mold and rusting Irken metals. He could smell the pungent predatory pheromones of another Irken. He could smell his own blood and he could not help but think of the last time he had been gored through his middle, suspended, restrained and totally helpless to his own plights.  
  
Zim chuckled back at Dib, his tone light and loopy, his face blushed as his body reacted, playing on more of that confused self-destructing emotion. He was so SO IN PAIN, such blinding pain. Such delicious pain.  
“You don’t know, don’t know what Zim feels, see? **_See_ ** ? Zims mind still prevails, you waste, you freak _ssssSSlug_ . You boot sucking _WORM._ ”  
Zims laughter came out like a slow croak. Then stopped. The focus in his eyes returned as he tried to find the source of the sound of a heavier tool being moved around.  
It didn’t occur to him that his insults had stopped making sense.

Next thing Zim knew he could hear the whirring of a heavy saw, revved once, then twice as a test before Dib responded.  
“Well that’s good, I’m glad you have the stamina to scream for me. I wouldn’t want to wear you out tooooo quickly.”  
  
Zim gasped sharply, struck with terror, his whole body flinched to sit up as he shouted;  
“OH NO!! NO NOT THAT!! NOT THAT YOU WON’T BE CAREFUL ENOUGH YOU’LL-!!”  
  
“ **GGHKL**!!” 

The spinning blade struck Zims ribs and rattled his whole frame with its whirring, buzzing destruction. As Dib cut slowly through the bone in his way of getting to Zim’s spooch, he’d pour a kind of jelly onto the bone to ease the friction of the very sharp saw, ensuring a clean cut was possible and things were done right. Though it was a procedure done without local anesthetic, it was not Dib’s intention to do things uncleanly or imperfectly. He only had one Zim to work with.  
  
Zim could feel the rattling machinery through and inside his bones. The rumbling rolled throughout his frame. He felt it all the way down to his restrained hands, and in the vertebrae of his neck. He felt it rattling in teeth as he tried to clench his jaw shut to keep from screaming too loud. Zim did his best to ignore the smell of his bone being sawn open, and his blood building up on the table and pooling over his skin as it was folded over itself. And the feeling of his bones breaking cleanly as they were shorn appart.  
  
Dib finished cutting open one side of the Ribs and stopped to lean over Zim as he wheezed.  
“And, how about now Zim? How’s that feeling?”  
  
“Chhhh, hhhhggu,,” 

Zim would have eaten through his own wrists just to turn his flushed face away. He wanted nothing to do with seeing Dib, and tried hard not to witness any of it. Not even closing his eyes could fully shut out the world, because behind his eyes burned bright white light rings.  
When he could get Dib out of his head, the visions of his past made Zims exposed stomach clench with stress. Steadily, they became louder and clearer. It hurt. Senselessly, Zim grunted:  
“N-never,,, succumb,, to you,,,” 

  
“Oh good. Then let’s get this other side open.”  
Dib, smiling, took a deep breath to keep from getting too excited by the phenomenal vision he was beholding.  
Zims open skin oozed with the pink of his blood, though the fluid showed up as nothing on Dibs coat arms he could feel the sticky blood building up in streaks and smears as the saw slowly spat strands out from around the spinning blade.

He pressed the whirling metal to Zims skeleton and carved away the remaining bars of bone getting in the way and encompassing his spooch.  
  
Once the saw had been shut off and set aside, Zim was all tight-lipped and bleary eyed from the deep, _deep_ , sore bone ache in the front of his chest. All those bones broken, all those nerves cut and disconnected. He tried to flinch as Dib pulled the saw away. The chunk of connected bone sat flatly with its minimal weight resting uncannily overtop of his internal organ sack.  
  
“I bet that was nothing to an Invader, huh Zim? You look like you’re handling this great! Just lemme go ahead and lift this out of there~”  
Dib would reach in with a pair of medical pliers and lift the bone up and away from Zims open chest so that he could see the front of his skeleton being pulled up and away and out of him, and Zim screamed raspily.  
  
“T-THAT’S MINE!! **THAT’S ZIMS**!! THAT’S m-MINE **PUT IT BACK DIB**!! **PUT IT BACK IN ZIM**!!”  
  
“Oh but if I put it back, how am I going to get at what you’ve got underneath? Come on, you want me to undo all of this and redo it later? All because of a wittle bit of panic?”  
Dib purred, mocking Zim as he began to clean up some of the blood with a special kind of super absorbent alien sponge. He held it in his pliers and gently dabbed around the wound area and skin flaps till he could clearly see the area that he was working with again.  
  
Zim felt Dib touch inside of his stomach and the inside of his folded skin, he felt sick. He blushed in embarrassment at his position, he was sticky all over with sweat and shame, and he screamed shortly as he felt Dib poke at the organ sack with his finger curiously.  
“STOP! STOP **YES** STOP!! STOP AND **NEVER** TOUCH INSIDE ME **EVER AGAIN**!!”  
  
To which Dib responds;  
“Oh no, no we’re in way too deep now, space boy. Time to take you apart and see what makes you tick.”  
Dib catches himself with a smirk and chuckles fondly.  
“No pun intended.”  
  
Zim catches the briefest glimpse of the scalpel in Dibs hand as it passes through the loud wall of bright lights. Those three rings dance in Zims vision as he feels a precise kind of pain inside himself, and outside of himself. He’s had his organ sack split open before, but never so slowly and gently, never so lingeringly and so precisely. The ache of it makes a low belly groan flow out of him, and it makes his vision spin and his mind whirl. The flash back of past torture and the present pain both nauseate him to irrational levels.  
Zim wheezes with a high pitch tone, not yet pleading, but his face twisted in encompassing pain.  
  
Dib splits open the sack from just beneath his gut, all the way up to where his throat starts to branch into his breathing sack, and as Dib does Zims perfectly neatly packed organs pour out over his body and across the lower part of the table as if they are some kind of unraveled rope.  
“ _Oh~_ ”  
Dib whispers, enchanted by the different colours, enchanted by the pulsing of them and the way they writhe and gently pull against his hands like weakened dying eels. Dib takes hold of the loops of thin long organs, and the shifting and pulling makes Zim gag as he feels them sliding around inside him. Zim can’t tell specifics, he doesn’t know that Dib takes hold of his Schreesomes and pets the squigly rigid tube as if it’s some kind of docile snake, but he can tell when Dib pulls on his internal PAK wires to see where and what they connect to. It’s like a kick to the guts, the way he flinches. He can feel it tug on the vertebrae of his spine, and that makes Zim squeal, and freak out more than anything else.  
Zim knows at all times that his body can and will survive a great deal of trauma, but that messing with his spine or any part of his PAK is a death sentence. Any little tiny bit of him that feels his PAK is being fucked with is going to make him freak out.  
  
And so in his head, two worlds blur into the past, and in the past he feels long slender fingers inside his stomach, a cold metal armor gauntlet feeling through a hole in his stomach to hold him by his spine. The feeling of those strong, thin fingers holding his vertebrae not so gently, and finally Zim squeaks, and out of his head he whispers with earnest fear.  
“Pp-lughhlease _My t-Tallest_ not-that _notthat_ t don’t endZiiiiiiim-don’tdon’tdon’tplease, **_PLEASE_** don’t please.”  
He inhales deeply and shakily, his tight fists try to grip the braces on his wrists as his big pink eyes threaten tears.  
  
It takes Dib a second to figure what Zim is saying, he is so raspy and quiet, and suddenly stunned with fear. The more still Zim is, the better results Dib is going to get from his experiment, the cleaner the grafts are going to be, the better the samples taken are going to be. Dib takes no issue with whatever mental episode Zim is having.  
“My Tallest?”  
He smirks.  
“Your tallest? Oh Zim, that is Rich. I’m your Tallest am I now, Zim?”  
Dib lets go of the wire he’d pulled on, knowing that it must attach to something important. He would leave it alone for further investigation once everything else was out of his way.  
“I know you’re suffering a lot right now, but who knew you would ever give _me_ such a highly esteemed title. Even under this kind of pressure, I didn’t think you’d start to crack so easily.”  
  
As Dib spoke, he was sorting through Zims insides, not knowing how cracked Zims psyche already was without the pressure he was putting on it.  
“ _Noooooooo,,,_ ”  
Zims eyelids flutter and he wheezes with his shame as the heat of his mental anguish combines with the fire that’s broken out over his entire front. Dibs voice combines with the whirring of his PAK and the little voice in the back of his mind whispers;  
  
_“You are nothing but meat, you are nothing but a dumb destructive tool, turned toy for us to play with, you should be HONORED to be touched by your tallest.”_ _  
  
_

Behind Zims closed eyes he sees the dark interior of a long forgotten cell, and he sees a tall figure with burning yellow eyes leaning over him. He sees the end of a spear punched through his center, dripping with his blood.  
  


When he opens his eyes, he gives a long shaky exhalation.  
“Sssssshuutup,”  
Zim knows he is not back there in that cell, he knows that he is captured in his own base by Dib. But it is SO HARD to reconcile that thought and not think of the past, and not let all the shame of his failure weigh down on his mind like a hydraulic press. The pain hurts so bad he is almost cross eyed. He can feel Dib holding in his hand the upper section of his main spooch chamber, the upper bulge full of blood vessels and valves which pumped fluids out to the rest of his body. It beats fast against Dibs gloved palms for multiple obvious reasons.  
  
As Dib felt Zims alien heart beating in his palm, pumping in panic, he used his free hand to shuffle through Zims innards for the organ he was looking for. What he sought out was a string covered in large pod-like segments the size of limes. Off these textured green and pink baubles were little offshoots like yellow little tentacles ending in bulbs. Dib was pretty sure of what he was holding, but called out to the computer just to be safe;  
“Computer, pull up diagram IA-8.”  
  
Zim could see the corner of a floating computer screen whir past him and float closer to Dib, the human hummed and hawed at what he saw, and gave the organ bauble in his left hand a little testing squeeze. Zim grunted weakly, and wheezed again.  
“I’ll KILL you….. I’ll fucking DO it,”  
  


“Sure you will.”  
Dib placates, before he reaches up to zoom in on the floating computer screen near his head. “Okay, Zim. This next part will be pretty painful, so I’ll explain what I’m going to do before you get too delirious to appreciate what’s going on inside you. You know how I said I was going to take samples? We’re about to pull the first few samples out of you. Most of them won’t be anything more than a little nip of pain. But what I’m going to do with your … Kroigunuasma?”  
Dib looked up at the diagram on the screen that he’d asked for to double check what it was that he was touching.  
  


This inspired no confidence in the pain-bleary Zim and he groaned out loudly. Dib leaned over him and his shadow cast over Zims unblinking eyes. It caused his vision to swim with the ghost images of two tall irkens casting long shadows in the light of a prison cell as he felt Dib touching around inside of him. It was hard to focus, and very hard to berate Dib for not having his innards memorized. He rasped the correct pronunciation out.  
“Kroingusums, _Idiot Dib_ .”  
  


“Kroingusums, right, that. What I’m gonna do with those is, I’m going to cut one of them out of you. Because I have a hard time seeing how this little organ can be used as its own highly complicated self contained mini chemical lab inside of your body. You’ll be fine without it for a while. I’m sure if you REALLY need it, your body will just regrow one, right? You’ve regenerated limbs and things before. This’ll be no different.”  
  
“Ohhhhh _NOOOOOhhhH_ ”  
Zim groaned, his head twitched as he tried to turn it to the side, his trembling antenna stood stiff and pointed back against the table in shivering terror. Dibs warm rubbery gloved hand cradled the back of his quickly pumping spooch so tenderly, though it restricted the depth of the breaths that Zim could pull in with his disembodied wheezing.  
“ _NOOHhhhHH_ ZIM **NEEDS** _THOooooOSE!_!!”  
  
“Yeeeeeah. But don’t worry, this part will be easy!” Dib would release the bulbous throbbing organ and keep his hand on Zims spooch.  
“What you _should_ worry about is the grafting. That’ll be the real shit show.”  
He would hold the beating blood chamber steady with one hand, while he began to cut off a thin sliver of dark pink Irken spooch meat with the other. He’d collect a sliver the length of his pinky finger and delicately balance it across the blade of the scalpel as he held it over Zim and lifted it into a small glass beaker.

Zim would flinch and cry out at the cut, he would pant hard as he bled and the open interior wound stung. Dib would wordlessly dab over it with his sponge, and spray over it with some kind of instant coagulant that he’d found in Zims medical supplies. If he’d read the date on the bottle correctly, it was probably still good. As he watched the spray settle onto the wound and solidify into a kind of gel-glue to hold the wound closed, he was satisfied that it worked.  
  
The gel glue itself felt like a cool press of aloe to a sunburn, only it was inside him. His big eyes squinted part way shut as he tried not to let the minimal amount of relief show on his pained expression. Dib didn’t deserve to know he felt anything at all, much less any kind of pleasure.  
And who was he, Zim, to be getting any kind of pleasure out of his own disembowelment?  
What kind of disgusting Irken abomination was he, to take pleasure from revealing himself to an enemy of the Irken empire? 

Zims mind was disjointed- he remembered, he remembered he was no longer part of the empire. Not a leader, not an idol, not a cog, not even a vestigial limb. He was adrift, he was on his own, he was ousted, formally. As Dib cut the next piece out of him- a segment of flesh from his honey stomach, Zim stubbornly choked on a withered sob, and bit his lip hard.  
  


_“Look at you. Good for nothing smaller. You do nothing but feed off of your own kind, do you know that? No Irken in their right mind would even address a parasite like you by name. You’re an it. An object. A thing.”_ _  
  
_

Spoke a bygone voice, deeper, slower, lingering like a slow acting venom. Were Zim not already in pain, he would have felt the internal impact of it in a more meaningful way. Instead it merely blended into the violent tumult of writhing magenta under Dibs large yet careful hands.  
  
“ImZim,,mmmmmmssZZim,Zim,”  
The small irken croaked, face flush, eyes burning, angry and crimped with tension. He wouldn’t let himself cry.  
  
“Awww. Yeah, you ugly gnat, I know you’re Zim. Who else would you be?”  
Dib lifted up Zims schreesomes, a green organ with naturally occurring spots of light yellow splotching it’s exterior, and cut off a disc of flesh from one of it’s ovular sacks. He’d set it in it’s own little labeled vial, just like the rest of the samples. He’d spray over the wound with the coagulant and say.  
“No other Irken could ever be as tiny and stupid as you are.”  
  
Zim bit his tongue and huffed out through his teeth. He wouldn’t beg. He wouldn’t break. Not for a valueless human. He reminded himself; Irkens don’t cry. Invaders don’t cry. Drones don’t cry. Only defects cry.  
  
In his mind he wrestled with the phantom feeling of his Tallest’s fingers sliding into the wound created in his sternum. Long ungloved fingers with their sharp poking nails pierced the flesh between his ribs to grab him by the ribcage and yank him forwards to hold him close. This wasn’t anyone he’d grown up with, it wasn’t Red, it wasn’t Purple. He’d killed them. The face that stared down in judgement at him looked on with one yellow, and one bright glowing red eye, and spat on his face.  
  


Zims breath stuttered, he huffed squeekily as Dib shifted his whole fucking spooch out of the way to get at his air sacks.  
“Stoppp,, stoop I’ve see-- I’veeee seen,”  
Dibs hand scoops under his alien lung and he pinches it delicately with his thumb to push the air slowly out, Zim sighs entirely outside of his own volition and his eyes go wide.  
“HHHHHHHHHHHH!”  
  
Dib slices off a tiny triangle of his breathing sack, and is quick to go through with the procedure as he did before, sample, vial, seal.  
“Hey Zim, if you stopped shaking so much I might be able to do this faster. Do you think you could try a little harder not to freak out?”  
  


“GHHHHHHHHHH!!! FFFFUCK YOU!! **FUCK** YOOOU FUCK- _FFUcK!_ ”  
Zim shouted back, followed by a short hacking coughing fit. Dib smiled, eyebrows raised in self satisfaction as he watched Zims innards jerk around and squirm against each other in reaction to Zims coughs. It was just SO cool looking. He reaches up to the chart above with a pleased hum, and considers cutting a sample off of Zims interior spike sheath, but worries that might somehow castrate Zim. He takes a moment to think about it, should he cut samples from Zims interior reproductive organs?  
“Hmnn,, well, Irkens are supposedly sterile, and the last thing I want is a brood of smeets running around, so that’s probably useless.”  
Dib muses under his breath, he leans on the table with his scalpel in hand, and taps the tip of the sharp blade lightly against the cloth in thought.  
“Eh. Maybe some other time. Let’s keep things on track for now, huh? This seems like it’s a lot for you, shrimp.”  
  
Zim growls in response, barely holding it together. His existence is a constant sore throb, his head aches with the pain of overlapped experiences.  
“Whaaaaaaaaaat are you even TALKING ABOUT?”  
  
“Nothing. You can rest that inert speck you call a brain.”  
Dib condescended Zim with a bloody pat to the noggin, and Zim wanted nothing more than to bite him in that moment as he hissed lowly.  
Finally, he set his hand back on Zims Kroingusums, and with his finger and thumbs, he pinched the fibrous bridge between one fleshy oval of the organ and another.  
  
“It’s fine that you can’t stop shivering by the way. I think I’ve probably still got a firm enough hold on this not to screw up and cut into the wrong organ.”  
Dib is bluffing, but he likes the way it makes Zims expression shift back to fear again. His antennae poke forwards as if trying to find out what Dib is doing and make up for what Zim can’t turn his head to see.  
Dib turns his attention away from Zims face to look at his work, and focuses hard as he takes a pair of medical grade scissors to one side of the gently pulsating bauble.  
With a snip the line is cut. From the opened tube, pink and dark black/green fluids begin to spray, and even as Dib pinched off the tube with a small pair of forceps, it continued to drip from the other side. Zim cries out loudly in pain and his heels press against the table hard as he tries to scramble away from the pain on instinct.  
“Shit-”  
Dib grabs for a cloth and sets that over top of Zims other organs to absorb the dripping fluid and keep it from leaking anywhere it shouldn’t go. Zim flinches at the feeling of the slightly textured cloth over his squeedilly spooch and writhing insides, and begins to gently pant. The pain, as bad as it is, slowly begins to get worse. It is as if he is a lobster in a boiling pot with the temperature slowly rising. Zim closes his eyes and he watches the light of the rings swimming around. Dizzy becomes something deeper as memories suck him down, the pain rushes in like an opened floodgate and with it, the memories of a time long past.  
  
“-Ok. Ok, nothing to worry about. You’ve got this, Dib.”  
The human mutters to himself, steeling himself. He cuts the other half of the Kroingusum’ bulb from it’s string, and the lime sized chunk of organ sits in his open palm. Dib can hear Zim starting to hyperventilate, and the sound is far more detached from the situation than any pained sound Zim has made before. Every bit of Zim is tensed tightly, from his fists to his curled toes. Before when he’d been nicking Zims insides, or sawing Zims Rib’s open, it had all been reactionary. But this reaction is all delayed, it’s got nothing to do with Dib. Zim isn’t even trying to look at Dib when his eyes pinch back open, and he stares directly into the light with a winging, shivering gasp.  
  
“Zim?”  
Dib tries, but he doesn’t get a reaction. Zims antennae kink up, his limbs go stiff and his face goes from stubbornly holding everything together, to something so emotionally distraught that it makes Dib’s heart flutter in fear. He catches the first stutter of a sob in Zims throat, and feels his own guts clench up into his chest in revolution with himself. Zim doesn’t respond. The pain is too great, it’s all encompassing, he drowns in it.  
  
His PAK had been administering a low level pain numbing drug that all soldiers are equipped with in case of emergency injuries. It’s the kind of thing that can keep an irken going long past the point where it should be dead- but without his Kroingusums connected, it can’t be processed correctly, it can’t flow into him and make things liveable. Zims situation has just gone from nightmare to unimaginable living terror. His hyperventilation doesn’t go away, the memories don’t go away, they get worse. And with all the pain blending into the experience of simply being alive, Zim can’t take it anymore. The rational mind cracks, and the past rushes in to absorb him in its endless empty brightness. All Zim sees is white, he feels like he can hardly breathe. The apparition of hands around his throat choke him. His antennae fall limp with overwhelmed submission, they twitch and jerk as he hallucinates the voice of his new Tallest telling him;  
  


_“Look at you, what a disgusting worthless existence you lead. You have accomplished NOTHING, Zim. I should have my drones dig a deep pit on a distant planet and toss you inside. We should leave you to rot, totally forgotten, buried alive in an unmarked cesspit, monument to your floundering and ineffectual crimes. You’re a defective tick. You’re lucky that I’m even sticking around to tell you this, aren't you Zim? Are you grateful for your one insignificant moment of acknowledgement?”_ _  
_ _  
_ Zims shaking inhale ends with an exhaling sob as tears finally seep out of the corners of his warm eyes. He feels his will to live weighing on him, draining from him as he returns to the memory of his brand new Tallest setting up to do unspeakable things to him. Awful things, unirkenly unspeakable things. Long fingers going where they shouldn’t be, objects, going where they shouldn’t be. Humiliating bondage, the use of his orifices as nothing but holes to use. The imagination is no limit, not to the Terrible and Ruthless Tallest Valev, with his one red and one yellow eye, locking Zims brain frozen in place with fear at the shocked dread of his own corrupted memory. Zims lips try to stammer the name. The room has fallen away, and nothing remains but Zim and his pain, and those glowing hateful eyes. That bright sterile yellow, that burning vicious red.  
“Phhhuulleeeassee,, ,,piiii-ttyyyyy, Ziiimmm, My, Tallest pleaseeeee”  
  
  
Dib scoffs, the thought of pitying Zim is laughable and he should NOT have pity for a fucking monster.  
“Oh come ON-You’re not going to start crying on me now, are you, insect??”  
  
He doesn’t get a response, and he feels like an idiot standing there with his fusion tool in hand doing absolutely fucking nothing as he watches Zim tip over the edge into a deluded panic attack.  
It doesn’t matter that he knows Zim has probably been tortured in jail, or something. Irken jail was probably brutal. He hadn’t been able to glean a single thing from his father about Moo-Ping10, but he had done his research. 

Zim hadn’t done time inside Moo-ping 10, he had been staying at a maximum detention facility shrouded in mystery, a dreaded place known as Troich Di’Vork. Information pages about it had been covered in red tape, they had broken links and had been full of useless information that didn’t connect. Forums spoke of such tortures as ripping prisoners limb from limb, being eaten alive, roasting prisoners live over fires, they’d spoken of open gang fighting, of neglectful guards, and how the Irken Elite could pay to see live streams of certain prisoners beaten for their amusement. Dib had scoured the overnet for videos like that of Zim, but he’d never once found any.  
Dib had once hazarded a guess that it was closer to being a Guantanamo Bay situation than that of a legitimate detention center, but without the information to confirm his suspicions it was impossible to say for sure.  
  
It’s true he doesn’t care about Zim, not at all. He just needs his test subject in one piece. So, he takes one end of the cut Kroingusum’ fiber and uses the one handed fusion tool (sort of like a small gun with a metal nose on one end, uses some kind of hot alien glue to suture two broken pieces of organic flesh back together), to mend the broken tube of an organ, so that Zims chemicals can eventually balance themselves out, and the Irken can stop leaking tears all down the sides of his face, and whimpering like a kicked animal.  
  
Zim DOES whimper, and he does it because he’s no longer aware of Dib. He does it because he remembers the time that he’d been pulled open by Irken elites, and had his insides pulled out and displayed on hooks for show, and how they’d filled his belly cavity with maggots to torment him. He remembers how he’d pleaded for them to stop, how he’d tried to play it off as a joke, how he’d tried to be strong through ALL OF IT. He remembers the ways they broke him, and how frequently he’d wanted it to be over, but had never been given the luxury. It all hurts so much. Zims mind and body buzz, the pain now a blazing inferno, the voices so loud that Zim can’t hear himself think.  
  
Dib finishes soldering Zims Kroingusums back together, and Zim lets out a warbling howl of pained screaming, screaming with wheezy frantic breaths. It nearly makes Dib jump out of his skin.  
“AHH!!! JEESUS CHRIST!! WHAT? WHAT IS IT?!!”  
Dibs fists clench, his shoulders shake with rage as he holds back everything to keep from hitting Zim and jeopardizing his delicate work. He asks Zim for an answer and all he hears back is.  
  
“Sssstooppp-ppphhggheease ssttoop,Myttalllestii--kkhhan’t,,, Zim---Mm-!! Cah-AN’T!”  
Big fat wet pink tears roll down Zims face, and it’s easily one of the ugliest crying faces Dib has ever seen anyone make. The way Zims eyes get all puffy and his lip curls up and wobbles. The way Zims big expressive eyes look, all welled up with tears in a bubbling, near unending stream of wimpy sniveling, it didn’t look RIGHT to Dib. This was a monster. Zim was a monster and there he was, crying.  


“UGH.”  
Dib groaned, crossing his arms, sneering at Zim, pissed off that the ex-invader was making him feel like total garbage.  
  
  
“Computer!”  
Dib barked.

“I know I told you to shut up for this whole procedure, because I don’t want your moralistic five cents on me doing my crucial planet saving work, but do you want to go ahead and fill me in on why it is that my lab subject is despondent?”  
  
“Oh, so now that what I told you what would happen is happening, you decide you need my insight?”  
The disembodied voice quipped back at Dib, while Zims weak blubbering provided an ambiance that echoed through the long hall of the med-bay.  
  
Dib looked at Zim, his brows knit tightly, trying not to let any kind of guilt at all show on his face.  
“I do, or I wouldn’t be fucking asking. Tell me what’s going on.”  
  
The computer would take one of the screens Dib had asked for, and display on it a diagnostic on what was happening inside of Zims PAK.  
“When you disconnected the Kroingusums from each other, you disrupted the flow of chemicals coming from Zim’s PAK. Since you chose to operate on him without anesthetic, out of some petty sense of revenge, that was the only thing keeping him from spiraling and going into shock. So, now he’s in shock, and he’s having some kind of hallucinatory flashback reaction to the pain. The only other time he’s been this freaked out was probably when he was in jail. And he keeps talking about his Tallest. What do you think that means, Dibutaunt?”  
  
Dib huffed pissily and jabbed a finger at the screen in his face, smearing it with the pink on his finger.  
“FIRST OF ALL. That’s not my fucking name. Secondly, you really think Tallest Valev, the most competent, controlling, hardest working Tallest in over an Irk Century, would take time out of his life to personally torment Zim??”  
Dib was flabbergasted.  
“I mean, I saw the results of The Trial. I know Zim has killed like four of the previous leaders by accident, but is that any reason to take a personal interest in tormenting him?”  
  
“For an Irken, that’s more than enough of a reason. He also caused two major blackouts as a smeet, and destroyed half the planet’s surface in a manic rampage. So, somewhere between the blackouts and the Altuscide , Zim probably caused the guy to take personal beef with him.”  
  
Dib listened and paced, and listened to Zim mutter delusionally to himself.  
  
Zim, still locked in some kind of pain-swamped mental looping fit, was not at all paying attention to what was going on around him anymore. Instead, he was everywhere, lost in the sea of interlocking happenstances, one painful episode blended into another, the worst of which involved his Tallest and the new rulers Counsellor, whose name evaded Zims memory. They were the worst of any and all of Zims imprisoned tormentors, and in that infinite moment they would not leave his pain-entrenched being.  
  
Dib looked over at Zim with barely masked concern.  
“Fuck. Fuck it, fine!!”  
He folded his hands into each other behind his back, with the sound of latex on plastic coated waterproof fabric, he smeared himself with Zims blood.  
“His Kroingusums are reconnected, that means he should start getting back to his old self in a minute or so, right?”  
  
“Not necessarily.”  
  
“You are absolutely useless.”  
Dib seethed, he put his hands on the table and looked down at Zim, all open and exposed, and beheld the consequences of his actions. He had caused Zim to crumble into something ugly and pathetic, something so disgusting he could hardly stand to look at it. He closed his eyes to swallow the experience and to stomach it, to accept that his plans would have to be altered for Zims comfort. As much as that rubbed him the wrong way, he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he broke Zim. Not after how long he’d been without him. What was even the point of having Zim alive without the personality intact?  
“Administer sedative solution 46 and don’t say another word unless I ask you to. This is already a fucking mess without your interjecting.”  
  
Dib would hear the table underneath Zim give of a distinctive “beepbeepbeep” followed by a mechanical hissing as the pneumatic injector pushed the fluid contents of an unseen vial in through a port in Zim’s PAK. Dib leaned over Zim as this happened. He adjusted the overhead light away and out of Zims face to give his eyes a break. Dib didn’t know how to comfort humans, he barely knew how to comfort himself, but something in him was compelled to try and comfort Zim.  
His hands hesitated to touch Zims face but he figured that was as good a place as any to start.  
His black rubber-covered thumbs swiped over Zims cheeks to clear them of the globular pink tears seeping out of Zims eyes, and the tiny Irken flinched with a violent gasp.  
“Woah there, hey. Hey it’s,,, It’s alright. It’s ok. You’re ok Zim.”  
  
Dib really didn’t know if it was alright. Zim looked right at him, but the way Zim looked at him it was as if the Irken was looking right through him. His eyes were blank, lacking in some distinct kind of lively spark that Dib was so used to. He couldn’t have even imagined a Zim without that spark of liveliness in him until that one, eerily quiet, sniveling moment. Dib felt pressure on him as if he was standing in a spotlight on stage someplace, and had forgotten all his notes. What were you supposed to say to someone who was in shock? Obviously he couldn’t drape a blanket over Zim, or give him hot chocolate or, really anything that would let him dip out of involving himself in the process. Dib was pretty certain it involved reassurance and saying the shocked persons name a lot. So, he tried that.  
“I’ve got you, Zim. There’s no Tallest’s here. No Irkens. No one’s going to kill you. You’re ok.” 

  
Zims eyelids drooped slightly, he exhaled softly, and Dib figured the sedatives must be setting in. Solution 46 would be enough to numb Zim from head to toe, but it would take awhile for it to set in, and it would take a while for Zim to calm down. Dibs fingers smudged blood over the ex-invaders face as he pet Zims cheeks, like you might with a cat. Dib did this subconsciously as he calmly spoke.  
“It’s Dib. Me, Dib, you remember? We’re in the base. No one’s hacking into you for fun--well. No one is mangling your insides for fun. It’s just me. And this has a purpose. So, it’s not as bad as actual torture. Actually, this is surgery, so it wasn’t ever really torture in the first place.”  
  
Some glimmer of recognition began to form in Zims mind, gently he was pulled back out of the black pit of mental and physical anguish. He experienced the loss of pain as a cool wind that rolled down from the center of his spine and flowed out gently to every tense shaking limb of his small green body.  
“My base,,,, The Dib,,,”

  
“Yeah! That’s right! We are safe in The Base right now. I’m performing a surgery on you. Remember?”  
Dib smiled and pulled the red goggles up off his eyes, as he did Zims delirious vision began to clear. The thing standing over him, it wasn’t Irken. It was a pasty olive, with white weird eyes and greasy black hair. Zims limp antennae slowly pitched forwards and he put the smell to the name, he matched the name to the face and he growled weakly.  
  
“Ohhh you remember alright. Doing better yet, space boy?”  
He tried, not sure if it was the right mood for the playful nickname but it was worth a shot. In a moment of curiosity and weakness he reached up to try petting the top of Zim’s head as if he had hair, his hands would smooth back Zims antennae gently, but without finesse. Zims eyelids drooped again and his mouth was held open, and both of these things were accompanied by a relaxed ”Guh.”  
  
Zim felt fucking exhausted. He could recognize who Dib was. He could only just barely remember what was going on, or that his body laid spread open on a table. The drug in his system left every bit of him feeling as if it were made of lead, and his numbed-out, stress-exhausted head made thinking so very hard. Dibs hand petting over his head, doing the barest of fucking jobs at soothing him by grooming his antennae, was working. Of course he could taste the latex of Dibs glove and the sweet metallic tinge of his own blood through the sensing hairs of his feelers, but cleanliness didn’t matter to Zim in that brain dead state. Zim closed his eyes and for a moment, he wanted nothing more than to lean into the hands that were petting him, and die contentedly.  
  
It was clear to Dib that the sense wasn’t immediately coming back to Zims head, but as soon as Dib could be sure Zim was out of his flashback, he immediately stopped indulging in petting him.  
  
With a rosy flushed face, Dib pulled his hands off Zims head. He wiped them off on the front of his smock coat as he pointedly cleared his throat.  
“Yeah, ok. I think you’re fine now. Let’s get back to work before your innards all dry out on me.”  
  
Dib huffed and took a moment to put himself back into a working headspace. Though it was going to be hard to get the mental image of Zims restful, tired, touch starved face out of his mind. He’d wrestle with the unfortunate results of his actions later. It would be a disservice to Zim and himself if he didn’t try to at least finish what he’d started.  
  
The remainder of the surgery went by as a breeze for Zim, he couldn’t remember what Dib had set out to do to him. All he knew was that he was safe in his base, numbed out and heavy and stuck in place as he looked up at his ceiling tiles. Slowly his dissociation began to dissipate, and he would begin to speak to his captor.  
“How long have you been here, Dib?”  
  
Dib paused his work for a moment, Zim’s tiny and unaggressive tone caught the man entirely off guard. It was hard to deny him an earnest answer when he didn’t sound hostile. Dib would get back to work as he answered, not wanting to waste what precious time he had before the drug wore off.  
“About 7 years man. I live here. I told you that, didn’t I?”  
  
“Here, in the Tube Lab?”  
  
Dib sighed. Of course Zim wasn’t going to answer his questions.  
“No. No. No, Zim. I moved into a different section of the base. I set up a bed to sleep in, turned one of your storage closets into a wardrobe, and set up an actual human bathroom I could use. There’s a working fridge, a working shower, and I even brought a couch down to sit in front of your big communications screen and play games and stuff.”  
  
“Oh.”  
Zim paused, and the air hung silent for a while. Dib expected anger, but nothing about Zim’s voice betrayed any kind of emotion other than tired.  
“That’s a good idea. I don’t think My Base will be getting any transmissions for a while.”  
  
Dib lifted up the next organ, the human heart, and shifted it around to figure out where it would best fit inside of Zim’s chest cavity. He decided to place it slightly off center, about where it would be in a human’s body. As he set it up, making incisions, repositioning the tubes of Zims new frankenstein biology, he’d start rambling.  
“No, I haven’t gotten any transmissions since you left. I mean, this place sat uninhabited and entirely offline for about 6 Earth years, so all that radio silence has probably got something to do with it. Your kind probably doesn’t even know your base is back online. Before I reconnected it to the overnet, I searched through it for anything that might alert Irk of it being back online, or like, might report back to Irk on whatever I was doing with it. I didn’t want The Control Brains sending anyone back out here to undo all the hard work I’d put into it. I probably got all the tracking bugs and things out of here already. No one calls me, no one bothers me. It’s just me, Gir, and The House in here.”  
  
Zim rasped breaths as Dib began to graft the heart into him. He could see it filling up with pink blood as the low level current from the muscles of Zim’s squeedilly spooch got it pumping. Soon the discoloured organ would begin to blush a dark rose colour, and Dib sat by, and watched to make sure nothing went wrong.  
  
“I miss Gir.”  
Zim admitted, his voice distant and dazed.  
“Where is he?”  
  
“He’s upstairs.”  
Dib smiled. He caught himself almost chortling, remembered that Zim was the enemy, and that this chit chatting was not how things were supposed to be going. What was it about telling Zim about his life that made him want to lighten up?  
“Trust me, you don’t want him down here right now. Your whole body is splayed open on an operating table. Remember?”  
  
“Oh yeah, that.”  
  
Dib could not fucking help himself but scoff, he bit his lip and shook his head.  
“Yeah. _That._ ”  
It was as if Zim hadn’t been having a total fucking melt down 20 minuets prior. It baffled Dib how Zim could forget things like that so quickly. Then again, maybe that was the whole point of him forgetting things in the first place? In truth, Dib didn’t want to think about it. He was a para-scientist. Not a para-therapist.  
  
Dib finished up setting the heart in place and moved on to attaching the stomach as he spoke.  
“You’ll see Gir soon enough.”  
He was hesitant to give Zim any good news, given that he was still bitter and resentful over his abandonment, but when he thought of the hideous crying face Zim had pulled, his weak emotional side gave out.  
“I told him he could bring you a cake after I was done. It’ll be good y’know, for your body to take in some nutrients. After yesterday he couldn’t shut up about showing you how good at baking he’s gotten. And he kind of has gotten better at cooking, I mean I can eat most of it. He still puts crayons and marbles and stuff in sometimes though, so watch out.”  
  
“Zim will do his best to avoid biting into the cray-ons. This is why we eat with utensils, and don’t use our hands like nasty ground dwelling vermin.”  
  
“Tch. Hey. What about mini doughnuts? You eat those with your hands, right? Don’t Irkens love that shit?”  
  
“HhmnmnnnnNNNN. WELL. Yes. But that’s different.”

Of course, OF COURSE that was different. Dib shook his head and switched his tools out.  
“Oh yeah, how’s that?”  
  
Speaking matter-of factly- Zim answered.  
“Well, fool Dib, mini doughnuts are designed to be eaten by hand, and not with forks, as your earthy cake confectionary is. This is simply the way things are done with Irken foods, they are small, holdable, and delicious.”  
  
Dib had to stop himself from saying “sounds like someone I know” for no reason at all whatsoever. He instead sucked in and bit his bottom lip,and glared at Zim out of the corner of his eye.  
“Oh? Does that mean Irkens are nasty ground dwelling vermin then? If you eat most of your food with your hands then,-by your own definition- you might be-”  
  
“NO.” Zim huffed, tired but a bit more loudly. “It is different. When we eat with our hands we are not sloppy. The food does not fall all over us and mess up our uniforms. We are neat and we are CLEAN, Dib Human.”  
After a moment he would add “I thought you would know that, since you’ve been in here studying for over 7 of your years.”  
As if his brain had been buffering to collect that recent information.  
  
“Yeah, yeah Zim I know how Irkens are. Maybe, I just like bothering you.”  
Dib would finish up with attaching the human stomach, and after giving his work a once over, he would start to gently tuck all of those organs back inside the durable fibrous bag of the Irken organ sack.  
  
As Dib did this Zim would groan and stick his tongue out uncomfortably.  
“Ugh. Do you HAVE to?”  
  
Dib, shoving Zims honey stomach in alongside his fresh new liver, would respond.  
“Uh, yeah. You want me to close you up with your organs all flopping around inside you?”  
  
“NO. No. Not that. I mean Irritating Zim. Do you have to do THAT?” His antennae would lift and flick slowly, betraying his internal thoughts as he mulled over his position. Zim entirely ignored his earlier moment of weakness in spite of the wet swollen feeling of his eyes post-crying.  
“I mean, you’re naturally pretty irritating. I guess it would be like asking a Flozorp not to Dooch.”  
  
Dib could not help himself but let out a quick chuff of disbelief.  
“Right, yeah. Frog zorps or whatever. They just gotta douche. That’s just like me.”  
Tuck, tuck, tuck. Dib looked up at the diagram on one of the floating screens to ensure he had done things right, before he’d pinch the organ sack shut and start to carefully mend it back together.  
  
“UUGH! NO DIIIB. A Flozorp!”  
Zim sighed a little bit louder, clearly he was coming back into himself. The more normal conversation he had, the more it eased his rattled consciousness. In truth it felt better for Zim to keep his mind on the present and forget entirely about the past. He could still smell the rubber of Dibs gloves on his antennae. He still knew that Dib had touched them, and the thought of it made him feel fucking weird, but that was fine. That was something he could also ignore.  
“What’s a douche, anyways? Isn’t that an insult?”  
  
With a smirk in his lilting tone, Dib replied;  
“ _I’ll tell you when you’re older_ .”  
  
Getting Zim’s ribs back in place presented a challenge. Because Dib wanted the option of going back in again and rooting around if he needed to remove or replace the human organs, he opted to reattach Zims bones using a special kind of internal clip. It was designed for live irken test subjects. Dib had found them amongst Zims old surgical supplies, but Zim didn’t need to know that. Using a small drill with tiny tiny screws, he capped off each rib and attached a kind of hinging clip onto each of the bone fragments. He tried to keep the conversation to safe topics, so as to not piss Zim off. He was numbed out to the pain of what was going on, and likely still a little bit loopy. If he could just keep Zim distracted till things were done, it wouldn’t be so bad.  
  
“Sooooo. What kind of stuff did you get up to in space?”  
  
“Mmmh.” Zim hummed thoughtfully.” I did a lot of photoshoots.”  
  
“What, really?”  
  
“Well yeah. I was working with this propagandist named Blorgyad. He was kinda scummy but he had this real PASSION for lighting and angles, and he was very good at making Zim look grand. Lots of complimentary colours for my skin, lots of reds and oranges and uh, repurposed vortian military attire. The Resisty is Vortian based you understand, so naturally they would want to dress me as an ally, and not as a def-”  
Zim paused and stopped himself, then recovered quickly.  
“--As a deserting Irken. They had to make Zim look more like a fully converted rebel, and not so much like he was a double agent. That kinda rumor comes with the invader label, as Zim is so suited for underhanded double crossery.”  
  
“Mmhmn.”  
Dib nodded, he was kind of listening. He knew about all the photos, but had never known it was a professional propagandist, and not just Zim standing out on an alien world somewhere with a flag in stolen armor, being followed around by some kind of camera robot. It was weird to think of Zim willingly working with other aliens.  
“I bet you were a real diva to work with.”  
  
“Who? Zim? Yeeeess.”  
The Irken purred pleasantly. Dib thought _“of course he would take being called a diva as a compliment_ ”, and continued on with his work as Zim went off again.  
  
“Well, Zim’s standards are high, I don’t want to come off looking like some kind of depressed slug. This is anti-Irk propaganda we’re talking about. If you want to compete with a society at that level of perfection and decadence, you must glorify your cause to the umpteenth degree. Murder and bloodshed and war are already romantic Irken concepts, but making rebellion look good enough to break deeply trained loyalty? That’s the real challenge.”  
  
Dib finished up the clips on the ribs, as well as the piece that he had pulled out of Zims chest. He would slot it into place and slide the clips into each other till he heard the solid “click” of them interlocking.  
  
“EH?? WHAT WAS THAT?”  
Zim’s antenna popped forwards.  
  
“Oh, nothing, that was just me fitting your ribs back in.” Dib smoothly fibbed as he began to unclip the flaps of Zims skin which had been folded outwards.  
“Anyway, you really think that a picture of you is enough to inspire other Irkens to abandon the empire?”  
  
“Why not?”  
Zim countered.  
“I’m who I am, I am Zim, and I have ended the lives of four entire Tallests’. This is more than even Irks own enemies can say. Why shouldn’t my image inspire the lied to and disenfranchised to rise up against their oppressive rulers, and join on with those who will respect and value them?”  
  
Dib ignored how Zim sounded like a propaganda machine himself, and began to theorize that maybe the rhetoric had been drilled into Zim in a similar way to how the control brains influenced Irkens. While it was true that Zim was no longer loyal to Irk (probably) the same could not be said for The Resisty, could it?  
“Alright, so were you and other,,,, Zim-like Irkens,” 

Dib carefully tiptoed around calling Zim short;  
“- respected and valued?”  
  
“Pheh, no Irkens are Zim-like. But, compared to how they were treated on Irk? Many of those who joined the cause were better off dying in space battles than living their lives in squalor and thankless servitude.”  
  
Dib finished up sealing the last of the flaps. Where the skin had been closed there remained a thick pink line of fresh wound, but Dib was sure it would eventually disappear, just like the rest of Zims scars. He leaned down to grab the last part for the procedure from a drawer on the tray, and held it at hip height where Zim could not see it as he asked;  
“So, does that mean you’re still loyal to The Resisty then?”  
  
“OF COURSE NOT!”  
Zims voice squeaked with the strain as he shouted.  
“They are liars and cheats- cheats like everyone ELSE in Zims life! They only wanted to use my image to grow their ranks, they only wanted to use Zims magnificent image for their own GAINS.”  
  
“Mmmmm.” Dibs lip twitched as he looked down on the split open and horribly disheveled Zim, unimpressed with his little outburst.  
“As if you’re not out to use everyone you come into contact with?”  
  
  
“WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?”  
  
Dib pulled the latched open collar in his hand out from under the table, and showed it off in front of Zim as he spoke.  
“Play stupid games win stupid prizes, Zim.”  
In a split second the hatched open collar came down on Zims exposed neck. The whole thing hinged around a silver embossed disk at the front of the device, and snapped shut around the back of the neck. As it clicked shut the two metal haves closed like a welded-on shackle, and showed no outward way of undoing the lock. Not only this, but a small metal tentacle, similar to the kind in Zim’s PAK, drilled painlessly through the back of Zims neck and attached itself to Zims Spine. It would fuse itself to and link up with Zim’s PAK, and a ring of light around the embossed Dib Skull symbol would light up yellow and beep twice to indicate that it was working.  
  
“HEY!!! WHAT? WHAT IS THIS??!!! PRIZES?”  
Zim uselessly tried to move his head to see what had been done to him, but of course, his forehead was still strapped down.  
  
Dib would zip down the mouth and nose covering portion of his gothy medical coat as he spoke.  
“That, Zim, is a special kind of shock collar. I built it _juuust_ for you, to keep you under my control. I call it ‘The Subjugator’. It hooks up to the wires of your PAK and transmits all your information onto this little wrist watch I’m wearing here- see?”  
Dib lifted up his square computer watch for the pissed off Irken to look at, and smiled in the face of his flabbergasted enemy.  
“Through this watch I can track your location. I can read off any and ALL of your PAK data. I can control your hormone levels. I can create painful electric shocks- you name it! I can use your PAK against you in any way I see fit. It should work that way, anyhow. I know your PAK is…. unique, to say the least. Let’s test it out.”  
  
“OH?? OH YOU THINK YOU CAN CONTROL THE MIGHTY ZIM?? JUST WITH THE PUSH OF A BUTTON??? WE’LL SEE ABOUT TH-KKC!”  
  
Dib cut the resisting Irken off with a command that caused the collar to constrict around Zims throat and clamp off his air. As Zim choked, Dib continued to monologue.  
“Yeah Zim, I guess we will see about that, won’t we? Choking you out is another feature of your new jewelry. You’ll find it’s full of nifty little surprises like that. Oh, did I mention? It’s made of the same kind of material as your PAK shell, so I don’t recommend trying to cut it or puncture it. The Irken neck is pretty vulnerable, isn’t it? You wouldn’t want to hurt that weak point and cut off your organic brain from your PAK somehow.”  
Dib beamed proudly as he pressed another button on his watch. The collar released its choke hold on Zims neck, and resumed its comfortable shape.  
  
Zim coughed. He coughed and he squinted, and he growled loudly to clear his throat.  
“YOU SUCK, DIB, AND YOU’VE ALWAYS SUCKED!! THIS THING, IT IS NO PRIZE!”  
  
“Oh, but you’re wrong. It is a prize,”  
Dib leaned down till he was bent over the table, his legs folded sluttily as he teased Zim by tapping the silver embossed front of the collar. One foot folded over his ankle. His just barely not flat ass popped out from the way his spine curved as he leaned over smarmily.  
“It’s the prize for the stupidest game you’ve ever played.”  
  
“YEAH? AND WHAT’S THAT?”  
Zim snarled.  
  
Smugness was like a cloud as the human patted Zims chest. The numbness was starting to slowly wear off, so Zim could just barely feel it as he heard the words slip from his nemesis’ lips.  
“Fucking with Dib Membrane.”  
  
“I’LL SHOW YOU FUCKING WITH DIB MEMBRANE!!”  
He barked hoarsely as he started to try and fight his shackles again. His whole face blushed in shades of deep mortified pink.  
  
Dib leaned back and started to chuckle at Zim. He then leaned on the table with his chin in his hand and looked down at the squirming angered alien.  
“Oh yeah? You’re really not gonna fuckin’ like that I put my logo on it then.”  
Dib stood upright and showed the shirt he had on under his coat. It was a kind of dark purple, and printed in the center of his chest was a human skull inside a circle with a sprig of M shaped hair poking out of the top of it.  
  
Zim turned bright fucking pink as he shouted.  
“YOU BRANDED ZIM?”  
  
“Yeah, well. Not quite, but sort of. It’s only semi-permanent.”  
Dib bit the inside of his lip in excitement as he watched Zim trying to kick and squirm and fight his shackles again. It was all so weak. Dib decided he’d rather have this side of Zim come out than the one where he was screaming and crying for him to stop.  
He’d have to be careful if he never wanted to witness that gut wrenching misery ever again.  
“Ok, ok, cut that out. Look I’m gonna let you off the table and take you to your new room, but you’re going to have to promise that you’re not going to be violent.”  
  
“AND WHY WOULD ZIM DO THAT??”  
Zims antennae perked up, one slightly lower than the other and all kinked up with stress.  
“You steal Zims servants, Zims base, and now you hijack Zims own BODY?? Why should I not fight you with every fiber of my living being?”  
  
“First off,” Dib lifted up and tapped the watch on his wrist where Zim could see it. That was point one. “Secondly, you have just undergone surgery. I know you pull jackass shit all the time, but I’m sure you’re not so stupid that you’d start a fight while your limbs don’t work right at the risk of splitting your stomach open.”  
  
Zim sneered. He growled, he hummed and he hawed for several irritated beats before finally sighing loudly.  
“FINE. Just this once I will cooperate with you. But as soon as I am healed, I will remove these kid gloves and prove to you the real metal of Zim. You think you know terror? You think you know the lengths of my might?? You haven’t seen ANYTHING yet, Dib-Grease.”  
Zim promised with eyes squinted so far shut that you’d think they were actually shut.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Look, just listen to me and do what I say, and I won’t have to make the collar hurt you. It’s that simple.”  
Dibs hand hovered over the shackle release latch on the side of the table, and he looked Zim in the eye to make sure that he had the invaders attention before he flipped it.  
“So. Listen to me and stay laying down on the table once your shackles are off. Your limbs are not going to react properly to the commands you give them. And if you do get up too fast, you will end up hurting yourself more than you will end up hurting me. Understand?”  
  
“UGH!” Zim growled, pissed off he was being talked down to.  
“I’m not a SMEET. YES. I UNDERSTAND.”  
  
“Good.” Dib smiled and released the switch.  
  
As promised, Zim did not try to get up, but he did try to lift his arms to claw at Dib. He made a couple of sluggish, lazy swipes at Dibs head with his claws, before folding his fingers into loose fists and letting them fall to his sides with a hiss.  
  
“Yeah? You good now that you’ve tried it?”  
Dib raised an eyebrow and watched as Zim lifted up his hand to rub the collar around his neck.  
  
Zim was too curious not to inspect it. The thing felt nearly seamless around his throat. It would be hard to get Zim to see anything as fully permanent. Of course he was going to try to get it off- he just wasn’t going to do it within sight of Dib. Or, directly after having his insides infiltrated.  
“Oh that was hardly an attempt. I would just like you to know how badly I’d like to kill you right now.”  
  
“Noted. Are you going to let me pick you up and take you to your room now, then?”  
  
“ZIM IS NO INVALID!! I WILL WALK MYSELF TO THE ROOM!!!”  
Zim took his hand down from his neck and started to push himself to sit up from the table. His elbow slid against it, his muscles too weak to let him lift his own weight. He looked up at Dibs smarmy face and curled his lip angrily.  
“FINE. You may carry Zim to the recovery destination. But this is the ONLY TIME I will permit it.”  
  
Dib would lean down to carefully scoop Zim up under his legs and behind his back. Zim would respond by flinching, his antennae standing stiff and still on top of his head as he was lifted up and tucked against Dibs chest.  
“Watch your hands, ugly! You stink of sweat!”  
  
“Tch. Yeah I’ve been operating on you for four hours now you squealing ingrate, do you think this jacket is thermodynamically regulated?”  
Dib grumpily resigned himself to put up patiently with Zims asinine outbursts, and leaned down to pick the IRken up.  
  


“ AND YET, YOU DARE TOUCH ZIMS BARE FLESH WITH YOUR GRUBBY APE PAWS??? Why did Zim get no gown? You freak, you WANTED to see Zim, naked and prone and _withersome_ !”  
The naked Irken flinched away, and tried to turn his body away from Dib with a hiss.  
Dib stuck his bottom lip out with a pissy huff.  
“You vain moron, do you KNOW you look like a lizard? There’s not even anything TO look at down there, Zim.”  
He’d look Zim in the eyes and slip his hands under Zims body. The’d share a tense moment of heated apprehensive eye contact as Dib continued;  
“ It doesn’t even matter that I’m sweaty, because I have gloves on. There’s no skin on skin content. Don’t be such a bitchbaby. ” 

“ZIM IS NO BITCH BABY!!”  
  
“Ok, then I’m going to lift you.”  
Being careful not to twist or bend Zims torso too much, Dib lifted Zim up into his arms.  
He found that Zim weighed next to nothing, like, maybe about as much as a really fat chicken.  
Dib liked the feeling of Zims warm skin against his gloved palms, but he carried Zim bridal-style for the sake of Zims comfort. He thought that might help him avoid being clawed.  
“Besides, it’s not like I’m trying to be a pervert by having you naked. I want to make sure that there’s no issues while I’m working on you, I don’t ENJOY staring at your naked green coochie. It’s procedural.”  
The human looked off and away from Zim, which didn’t lend any credence to his argument.  
  
“COOCHIE??”  
Zim spat, he turned his head to rage at Dib properly, his head tucked against Dibs shoulder where he could hear Dibs heart beating grossly under his antennae.  
“I hate you. And I hate that word. And I don’t care what you are telling yourself, you pervert. You’re a disgusting xenophile, and you always have been. I bet you’ve never even been aroused by a human image without some kind of skin tint filer over it.”  
Zim could hear Dib’s heart beating faster, and his panic made Zim Grin widely.  
  
“OH I SHOULD DROP YOU IN THE HALL AND MAKE YOU CRAWL TO YOUR BED!”  
Dib boomed while Zim looked at him, unworried. He knew Dib wouldn’t drop him, not after making such a big deal about his bodily wellbeing.  
  
“Tell Zim he is wrong and I will gladly do it. Go on. Tell me.”  
  
“Fuck off. You don’t know me. You barely knew me in the first place.”  
  
“Mhmn.” Zim folded his legs over each other and checked his nails as he began to rattle off everything he remembered about Dib.  
“You have a slight slouch on your right side, your eye twitches involuntarily when you’re tired. You stick your tongue out when you’re straining your dumb ape brain too hard. When it’s cold out you like cold drinks. When it’s hot you like hot drinks. I chipped one of your left tooths when we were fighting once and you never got it fixed. You used to drink a lot of Vanilla Poop Cola, and your sweat still smells vaguely of rotten vanilla bean. Need I go on?”  
  


It wasn’t like Zim had spent years thinking about his old nemesis, it was just that they were all so fresh and simple to pull forward from his memory banks. Compared to all the awful things that he remembered, this was easy. This was nothing. This was like a drop of rain on the ocean’s surface. He didn’t care about Dib, he just wanted to be right. He just so happened to be observant, and good at his job of being a spy. Obviously.  
  
Dib rounded a corner into the room he intended to place Zim in. 

It was a repurposed storage unit, devoid of any electronics that Zim could use to regain control of the base. 

The room was larger than a jail cell in its width. On one wall was a double wide Irken lounging bed, far too large to be reasonable for one tiny Zim. On the opposite wall facing this was a 50 inch screen which could be used to do all sorts of screen based activities.  
Dib had ordered the base to set it up, and without thinking had not specified for them to make it into a place of misery and punishment. That was his bad. In such a cushy environment, Zim was going to act like he was some kind of royal figure being held for ransom. Dib kissed his teeth, but knowing Zims proclivities, he assumed his extraterrestrial captive would probably act like that no matter where he was kept.  
  
Dib’s heart beat quickly against Zims feeler, and Zim could hear Dib swallowing like there was some kind of lump in his throat. The human leaned in towards the cushy resting slab and set Zim down in the middle.

Maybe it was the fact Dib didn’t have much in the way of social interaction anymore, or maybe it was the fact he was disconnected from anyone who had ever known him closely enough to pick up on his personal ticks; but Zim dredging up factoids about him like that tugged at something internal and tender. Zim, who had abandoned him, had no rights to go about acting like he knew Dib anymore.  
Dib membrane breathed in sharply through his nose and stood tall over Zim, he sounded almost choked up as he responded.  
“That doesn’t mean you know me now, Zim. It doesn’t mean that you know what I’ve been through, or how it’s affected me. Lots has changed since you left.”  
Dib lifted up his chin as he spoke, like a defiant child, refusing the very possibility that he could ever be known.  
  
Zim settled onto the big plush bed under him. He let his antennae tilt back and relax as he folded his hands over his naked belly. It pleased him to see Dib in noticeable emotional pain, and he purred back tiredly.  
“Then I’ll have to interrogate you properly to fill in the blanks once the shoe is on the other foot, hmn?”  
Zim looked around himself for some kind of blanket, then lifted one entitled bare brow to look at Dib expectantly.  
“Do you expect Zim to lay here nude and uncovered **_again_**? How am I to heal correctly if I am chilled? You imbecilic loathsome freak.”  
  
Dib rolled his eyes hard and dipped his head to hide his angry blush. He grabbed a blanket out from a drawer under the bed, and he dropped it into Zims lap in a big fluffy pile.  
“Whatever you say, you delusional menace.”  
He dismissed callously, and begin making his way towards the door.  
“Oh, by the way, the base does belong to and obey me, but you can ask for clothing or food when you want it. I’m not that cruel.”  
  
Zim would grunt at the mild pain of having the blanket land on him in a heap, taxed effort on his face as he arranged the blanket over top of himself and ignored his growing awareness of his post surgery pain.  
“Aren’t you? I was under the impression that your experimentation was a thinly veiled front, so that you could torture the mighty Zim for your own, **_sick_** _amusements_.”  
Zim growled as he eased himself back into a giant pillow, and squinted at Dib scornfully.  
  
Dib squinted back, his nose bridge crinkled as he sneered.  
“I’m a scientist, Zim. If I was just trying to torture you, I wouldn’t have been so clinical about it.”  
But he had to wonder; did Zim not remember the reason behind why Dib had been digging around inside of him, or was he just being a bitter little snipe?  
The human turned away from Zim and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat.  
“Get some rest, Zim, you bitchy aphid. You’re gonna need it.”  
He’d stand by the doorway and turn back to look at the Irken, a tired sneer crinkled his cheek as he added.  
“I think I’ll show you some real torture _later_.”  
  
The notion of being legitimately tortured again caused Zim to shiver, and his antennas to poke straight up as he shouted after Dib;  
“HEY!!”  
Then Dib dismissed Zim without another word.  
The Irkens growling was more of a bratty whinge; as he pulled the blanket with his claws he built up the anger to shout after Dib.  
“YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS DIB!”  
  


As he left the room, the doorway would light up with a see through wall of yellow electric energy.  
  
Zim immediately knew what the barrier was for and why Dib had set it up, it was not unlike the energy walls he’d seen in his sordid criminal past.  
His raspy voice cracked.  
“YOU DIDN’T MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT LOCKING ME IN HERE!!!”  
The Ex-Con screamed down the hall after Dib, but Dib knew that Zim wouldn’t be getting up off the bed to follow him. It was too comfortable, and if there was anything Dib knew he could rely on, it was that Zim would prioritize taking time off fighting to lick his wounds.

As Dib skulked down the hall he lifted his head up to speak to the base.  
“You can let Gir down here now. Also, you’re free to speak to me. But I don’t want to fucking hear it about taking pity on him. It’s just that- it’s pity. He’s mentally unwell.”  
  
“Can I at least get a _‘Ohhh computer, you in all your wisdom were correct about him being fragile, he sure is fucked up, and you sure were right!’_ ”  
The sentient home berated him.  
  
Dib threw his arms up in the air with a loud exasperated sigh.  
“ **YES** . Fine!! YOU WERE RIGHT! THERE!! Now fuck off!”  
  
“Is that a command? I’m stuck here dude. Where would you have me fuck off to?”  
  
Dib groaned and dragged his hands down his face. He was due a nice two hour ablution in his highly advanced hijacked alien shower.  
  
Minutes later, Zim would hear the fast squeaking of unoiled cart wheels, and the unmistakable clacking of hollow little robot feet racing their way down the hall. As the unique SIR unit skidded to a halt, he would almost topple his confectionary creation over onto the floor.  
What Gir had baked for Zim was a 4 layered lopsided abomination of a cake. It was made of confetti batter with a fake strawberry filling, loaded up with way too much sugar and frosting to be considered humanly edible. For an Irken though? It was a borderline delicacy.  
Zim struggled not to let his fear of Dibs threats and the ache of his unwanted parasitical organs bring him to tears, and Girs kindness soothed him.  
Though it threatened to overwhelm him again, there was Gir. With a big stupid proud grin on his face, the insane robot wheeled in his gift through the locked door of Zims room without issue. Gir cut a mangled hunk of cake for Zim , then unhinged his jaw and upended the remaining cake into his infinite robot stomach, and together the two of them sat while Zim munched and groaned. Gir put on reruns of the angry monkey show, making it easy for Zim to mentally check out after a while.

  
The Irken outcast adjusted to his wounds as they grew sore. Though revenge and escape were at the forefront of his mind, Zim was placated against acting against his own health by good food and the dear company he was in.  
Gir had always been such a good listener.  
For a moment it was just like it had been when he’d left the planet. But now Zim had a new mission of his own design. As he ate and relaxed, he began to heal. His free hand touched the cold outer metal of the ring around his throat, both lamenting his position and using his anger as fuel to do something about it, he’d formulate the skeleton of his new scheme.  
Zim would get the collar off, and after pulling all of Dibs secrets and fears out of him in the most excruciating way possible, he would kill the human for all the trouble he’d caused. Each new trespass against Zim would add fuel to this fire. He would not forgive Dib for stalling his escape. If the human wanted to get in his way so badly, he’d gladly show him the consequence of his actions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long to come out!  
> I had intended to publish this shortly after Halloween but time got away from me and the chapter just kept growing in size. Turns out I have a lot to say on this specific turn of events! Thank you for your patience, feedback, kudos and bookmarks <3 I hope you enjoy it :) 
> 
> I am only updating this chapter with 1 illustration for now, but I will add more throughout the month as they are completed.  
> 3/3 Illustrations finished (YIPPIEEEE)
> 
> Special thanks to awkwardFawn here on A03 ( https://aporetic-elf.tumblr.com/) and Tia (https://priest-of-rage.tumblr.com/) for proofreading and assisting me in formulating this chapter
> 
> For Space Trash Updates and au related illustrations check me out on izspacetrash.tumblr.com
> 
> For a more streamlined read through of the prologue comic, here's a link to the first page:  
> https://izspacetrash.tumblr.com/post/617862664951136256/spacetrash-pg-1-first-youre-there-next?is_related_post=1#notes


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